Dark Moon
by arceus100
Summary: An ancient evil is rising, and it's up to the mane six and some new friends to reawaken the ancients and rid the nine worlds of a great evil. However, with the ancient prophecies beginning to come true, the ponies must travel the nine worlds and rid them of evil. OCs accepted.
1. Prologue

**To explain WHY I'm writing a My Little Pony story, I'll tell you about WHY I even bothered to watch it in the first place. Well, a person whom I will not mention told me to watch a video/movie that is a crossover between Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. So I watched it and it interested me, so I took a look at the series, and so I decided to take a look at the series. After watching some of it (namely the first 2 episodes of each season), I figured it was an interesting series thanks to 2 things: if a story has good characters that act to their personality and feel like they're reacting as they would react should they actually put into that situation, it has some more points in my book, and also if the storyline is interesting, they get more points. MLP: FiM has really interesting and diverse characters. . . On second thought, I don't need to talk about this since no one is reading this story that is not a brony. . . Well at least there's a 99% chance that the first person to read this story is either a fan of My Little Pony or a brony, so I don't need to extend this A/N to over 8 lines long.**

**My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: Dark Moon**

**Prologue**

Twilight Sparkle tried to sleep. She really did. But something was keeping her awake.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw a vision. A black stallion with glowing red eyes seemed to stare at her while she saw Ponyville burning behind him.

Shaking her head, Twilight got out of bed. She cast an illumination spell and saw Spike sleeping in his bed. Smiling, she summoned a book and began reading.

"Daring Do and the Griffin's Goblet." she read. "Daring Do had just completed a daring adventure to obtain the legendary Sapphire Statue. She had been grounded for a few days, but her wing was finally better. She had -" A flash of lightning interrupted her, but this wasn't normal lightning. Twilight saw it and knew something was not right. It was black lightning.

She immediatly dropped the book and grabbed a book called "The Encyclopedia of Weather and Weather-Related Terms: The Pegasus Edition." It was a book distributed to all pegasi, but all librarys across Equestria had gotten a copy so unicorns and earth ponies could study up on weather.

Twilight used her magic to flip to a page dealing with lightning. She looked at the section labeled "Types of Lightning".

"You will not find many different colors of lightning in Equestria" she read. "Lightning normally only is your standard yellow lightning bolt, though if the weather station fills up a cloud with a lot of electricity, you may find blue or even white lightning bolts, though they are very rare. Many ponies claim to have seen black lightning bolts, though there is no such thing. However, it is possible to create a black lightning bolt by using powerful dark magic."

"Dark magic?" Twilight wondered. "There must be. . ."

There was another bolt of lightning, and this time, Twilight heard something.

She rushed outside and saw villagers running away in fright. The lightning bolt had hit a lamp pole and the pole burst into flames, and quickly devoured the pole, and then spread across Ponyville.

Twilight looked around in horror, remembering the vision she had.

Spinning around quickly, she saw a black stallion standing on a hill behind her. Their eyes locked for a moment, and the stallion seemed to disappear, so quickly that one might dismiss it as their imagination.

Twilight looked back at Ponyville and saw that it was burning, just like she saw in her vision.

Knowing what she needed to do, she concentrated her magic on all the water she could find in Ponyville. She summoned it all and sent it all flying onto Ponyville, putting out the fire, but causing a bit more chaos in the process.

Suddenly, she heard laughing, and above her, there was the black stallion again, laughing like a madpony (madman). He then saw her and like lightning, had flung a large chunk of a burned-out house at her.

The last the Twilight remembered was the sound of the black stallion laughing.

**TO BE CONTINUED**

**Please don't judge this story by just the prologue and the next chapter, because it only gets interesting later. Also, just as a note, you can submit OC characters, and they may or may not appear in the story. (Note: Please submit them by PM and note if you want them to be a protagonist or antagonist (hero or villain). Thank you.**


	2. Chaos Returns

**A/N: As a reminder from the previous chapter, OCs are allowed to be submitted.**

**Chapter 1: Chaos Returns**

When Twilight came to, she was in Fluttershy's house.

"Where am I?" Twilight asked.

"You're in my house." Fluttershy replied while she was trying to feed Angel some carrot salad. "I found you after the fire went out thanks to the water you took from the river."

"Oh, right." Twilight said. "Um, Fluttershy? Since you were at Ponyville during the fire, did you notice anything strange?"

"Nope." Fluttershy said. "Except the moon disappeared. I got scared and inside a bush, and that's where I saw you put out the fire."

"But there was supposed to be a full moon last night." Twilight wondered. "How could the moon have disappeared?"

"I don't know." Fluttershy had finally gotten Angel to eat some carrot salad and had walked up to Twilight.

"I'm going to need to think about this." Twilight said. "Do you mind if I head back to the library now?"

"Sure." Fluttershy whispered. "But first, I have to -" She never managed to finish that sentence, as Twilight had already left.

* * *

Twilight saw the devestation the fire had caused. Ruined houses, shops, and signs scattered the street. Thankfully, her house was spared.

When she entered, the first thing she noticed was that Spike was gone. On his bed, there was a note.

"If you want your precious Spike back, you'll have to come and get him. Meet me in the Everfree Forest in three days, or else you'll never see your assistant again." she read. "Oh no! I have to save him!" She ran out the library.

Unfortunetly, Twilight never had the chance to leave the library. Somepony decided to gnaw at the laws of logic and just as she opened the door, an anvil flew in and hit her in the face. And then a piano landed on her.

"Perhaps this isn't such a good idea." Twilight said, dizzy.

* * *

After getting through the door, she noticed an overly large amount of precipitation, but instead of normal rain, it rained abnormal items, such as lamps, matches, knives, pineapples, and of course, meatballs, though nopony knew what they were (due to horses being herbivores and all).

She noticed that other ponies had gathered under trees and hiding from the precipitation.

When Twilight noticed Applejack in the crowd, she immediatly walked towards her.

"Where've you been?" Applejack asked. "We looked through the crowds of ponies, but we couldn't find you. Fluttershy said you were okay, but I just needed proof. I got all of us here."

She noticed Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Pinky Pie behind Applejack.

"I think it's a little too soon for a happy reunion." Twilight said, casting a glance at the buffalos doing ballet.

"Have I seen this before, somewhere in the past?" Rainbow Dash asked. "Because I seem to recall something in our past adventures involving buffalos doing ballet."

"You mean when we brought Bloomberg to Appleloosa?" Applejack asked.

"No, no, no. Some other time." Rainbow Dash replied.

"What about when Applejack stopped a herd of buffalos with a dog?" Pinky asked.

"No, no, no. Not then, either." Rainbow Dash said.

"How about the time when Discord made everything all crazy and defy logic?" Twilight asked.

"I thought we agreed to never speak of that again." Rarity commented.

"We agreed to never talk about 'Tom' again." Applejack said, much to Rarity's annoyance.

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking about." Rainbow Dash said.

"'Tom' was what you were thinking about?" Applejack said, which earned him some dagger eyes from Rarity.

"No, the time when Discord made everything chaos." Rainbow Dash said. "That must be what's happening here!"

"But I thought we sealed Discord away." Twilight said. "And we already learned that the only reason he escaped the first time was because Princess Celestia and Princess Luna's bond with the Elements was weakened, and our bonds with the Elements haven't weakened. . . have they?"

Just then, a scroll floated down, but was crushed by an anvil, which caused a noise so loud that Fluttershy buried her head into the ground out of fright.

Twilight used magic to grab the scroll and read it out loud.

"Please come to my castle immediatly." she read. "This is an emergency. There's no time to explain. - Princess Celestia."

"Well let's go!" Rainbow Dash said. "We can't just stay here and chat while the princess is calling for us."

And so the ponies set off towards Canterlot Castle. But all was not well, as somepony had seen them leave. To be exact, it was the black stallion from the fire of Ponyville and Twilight's vision. The black stallion then leapt up and teleported away.

* * *

"Princess Celestia!" Twilight said as she came running through the doors. "We came as fast as we could, but the weather was a problem."

"Well, we need all the time we can get, but I suppose the fact that you made it is good enough." Princess Celestia said. "For you see, something terrible is happening. Not only is the weather all strange, but Discord has broken free of his stone prison!"

"But how?" Twilight asked.

"It seems that there is some darker force behind all this." the princess said. "Something more powerful than the Elements themselves."

Suddenly, Fluttershy screamed and hid behind a statue.

"Fluttershy, what's -" Rainbow Dash saw what Fluttershy had seen, but didn't cower in fear.

Princess Celestia and Twilight turned and they saw a giant monster in the window. It was giant with the head of a lion, the body of a dragon, the right wing of a bat, the left wing of an eagle, the left talon of an owl and the right paw of bear. It had the right leg of a stallion and the left leg of a tiger.

The creature laughed at the faces of the ponies as they looked upon him, and Twilight recognized the laugh. It was the laugh of the black stallion.

"You-you're the-the" Twilight stammered.

"Yes?" the creature said in a low, menacing, dark voice. "What am I?"

"You're the stallion that I saw in my visions at night." Twilight said. "You were at Ponyville during the fire. You were the one that started the fire."

"Yes, yes, and yes, but that is not all." the creature said. "This is a simple manifestation of my spirit. Using my dark magic, I can take the form of anything living and breathing. Now I advice you to be careful with who you trust. I can be anybody or anything. I can be anything from a fire breathing dragon to a cranky old pony to the person you trust the most." He spoke while traveling across the room through the walls, similar to what Discord did.

"Not only do I operate evilly on my own, but I have minions." the creature continued. "You may have met some of them, namely Discord and Night Mare Moon."

"You created Discord and Night Mare Moon?" Princess Celestia looked alarmed.

"Yes I did." the creature said. "And here's the real kicker. All hard feelings are absorbed by me once released. So basically, all discord that's happened in the history of Equestria has one way or another gotten to me and strengthened me. At this point, even your puny 'Elements of Harmony' are nothing to me, and I'll demonstrate!"

Pointing a finger at Canterlot Tower, the entire tower exploded, crushing everything and everypony in there.

"You'll never get away with this, whoever you are!" Twilight said.

"Well, maybe, but I say that's most unlikely." the creature said. "For I can show you your precious 'Elements of Harmory' now!" He pointed a finger at the ruins of Canterlot Tower and summoned the box containing the Elements into the picture where there was nothing anypony could do.

"And now for the grand finale. . ." the creature flew out of the painting and into the actual hallway. He then swiped the Elements of Harmony out of the box and crushed them to pieces with his mere hands, watching the pieces fall to the ground as everyone stood, horrified.

"Well, I should be going now." the creature said. "You know, more chaos and all. Ha ha!" He flew away and created a huge hole in the wall.

"This is terrible." Princess Celestia said. "My little ponies, you need to get back to Ponyville. Twilight, you know about a book that will help, right?"

"Yes." Twilight replied.

"Good. We're going to need all the help we can."

"Just one more thing." Twilight said. "My assistant, Spike, went missing. Do you think you can help find him."

"I'll see what I can do." said Princess Celestia as she walked away.

* * *

In Ponyville, it seemed Discord had truly awakened and had started remaking Ponyville into the Chaos Capitol of the World.

Discord was having fun watching chaos reign in Ponyville, but was interrupted by Twilight and the others trying to back to the library.

"Well if it isn't you six." he said. "I may have lost last time, but I'm not going to let you beat me this time at my own game!"

"Ooh, ooh!" Pinky Pie said. "What is it? Pin the tail on the pony? Tag?"

"We're not interested in playing your game, Discord." Twilight said.

"Oh really?" Discord feigned surprise. "I thought we had a good time last time."

"No. We. Didn't." Twilight replied.

"Well, too bad for you, but we're already in the game, and you won't get out unless you win." Discord said. "And your precious 'Elements of Harmony' are all gone, so can you stand up to my power without your puny powers of 'friendship.'"

"I don't see any game." Pinky said, peeling her eyes (not literally).

"Here are the rules." Discord said in a loud voice. "Rule Number 1: No wings or magic."

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash's wings disappeared, causing Rainbow Dash to fall to the ground. Also, Twilight Sparkle and Rarity's horns vanished.

"Rule Number 2: All of you must -"

"Yeah, yeah, we get it. Everypony must play or else the game's over." Rainbow Dash said.

"Rule Number 3: You must play seperately, or else I win."

"But then you've already won." Twilight said.

"Exactly!" Discord yelled with a gleeful look on his face. "But I forgot Rule Number 4: YOU MUST FOLLOW THESE RULES."

"That's not a rule at all." Applejack said.

"Yes it is. Now go!" Discord teleported them into a large maze strangely resembling the Castle Labyrinth, only underground, and much, much scarier.

* * *

"Okay, everypony, listen up." Twilight said. "Discord said that we must play seperately, but it doesn't mean we can stay in touch. Everypony take a different path and try to find your own way out of the maze. Every few steps call out to make sure your within hearing range of everyone else. But don't worry about that too much, since we're underground, so the sound will echo around the cave. If you hear someone, respond and try to make sure all of us are all accounted for. Got it everypony?" She heard a yes from everypony. "Well then, let's go!" Everyone clobbered in a different direction and made sure to do what Twilight said.

Meanwhile, Discord was watching them. He laughed and then said something through a pipe in the wall of earth.

* * *

**Fluttershy's POV (with a bit of narrator POV at the end)**

"It's so dark." Fluttershy nervously walked through the maze, blind and very scared. "Oh, I wish everyone else was here. Rainbow Dash? Twilight? Rarity? Pinky? Applejack? Are you there?" she called as loud as she could, which wasn't much higher than her normal voice, but the echoes were loud of enough to carry it around the cave.

After hearing the responses from everyone else, Fluttershy kept walking, when she suddenly heard a large crash. She then jumped upwards in fright and curled into a ball in a dark corner. But then she heard footsteps, and she got scared and quickly ran down the path without paying attention to how far she was going. By the time she had stopped running, the footsteps had stopped.

"Hello? Anybody?" she yelled as loud as she could, which truth to be told, wasn't very loud. But, when nobody responded she quickly dashed back the way she had came, but she was stopped when she bumped into something. . . alive. She looked up and screamed when she saw a pair glowing red eyes. Quickly turning the other direction, she ran, but came to a halt when she saw the glowing red eyes again. She turned around, but they seemed to always appear in front of her, no matter where she went. She curled up into a ball and hoped whatever was chasing her would pass by, but when she opened her eyes again, she saw a black stallion. With glowing red eyes.

_Oh no, oh no, oh no!_ she thought frantically._ This must be the stallion that Twilight was talking about! Oh no, oh no, oh no._

The stallion glared down at her, and suddenly, Fluttershy had an idea. She lifted her head up straight at the stallion and tried performing The Stare.

Realizing what Fluttershy was doing, the stallion reinforced his glare, and Fluttershy did the same. They stared at each other for an uncounted amount of time when both's eyes began to tire from holding their respective glares for so long. But then, Fluttershy's gaze began to weaken. And so did the black stallion's. Fluttershy's knees began to buckle, while the black stallion's body was shaking.

_At some point, one of us will weaken._ Fluttershy thought. _And I have to be the one to come out on top. For my sake, for my friend's sake, for the sake of Equestria_. She stared even harder and the black stallion reinforced his to make it even with hers.

While this was going on, the room was slowly darkening due to the black stallion's eyes weakening from countering Fluttershy's stare. They began circling eachother, but still keeping their eyes on the other's eyes. Eventually, the room was too dark to see anything but the pony's sihoulettes. And just as a new mysterious pony entered the room, one of the two ponies battling it out fell. But it was too dark to see who was left. The mysterious pony slowly walked towards the fallen figure, but just as he was about to get close enough to see, he was struck in the back of the head and fell, his conscious slowly slipping away. The last thing he remembered was a single symbol carved on the stone floor.

**TO BE CONTINUED**

**A/N: Once again, if you want to submit an OC, feel free to.**


	3. Eagle Strike

**Disclaimer: I do not own My Little Pony.**

**A/N: Again, OCs can be submitted.**

**Credit to Leafwillow2 for the OC Mayli, and credit to Fallout4Ever101 for the OC Swift Steel. Keep submitting OC.**

**I'll be doing OC shipping, so if an OC is submitted that fits the personality of a real pony, I'll contact the OC's owner to check for permission.**

**Chapter 2: Eagle Strike**

When the mysterious horse woke up, he had no idea what happened. He remembered seeing a symbol carved on the floor as he was falling, but he didn't know what it was. He went through the basic process of getting your brain going after falling unconscious. Name? he thought. Eagle Strike. Race? Alicorn.

Eagle Strike thought about how wrong this operation had gone. He was part of a secret pony organization known as the Sol, seceretly founded by Princess Celestia to combat evil. However, unlike every other pony in the group, he knew secrets that not even Princess Celestia knew. He knew about an alternate dimention known as Earth, inhabited by a race of intelligent beings, if not more intelligent, than ponykind. However, the great chaos known simply as Chaos plans on using his own minions to conquer Earth and open a dimentional portal to transport his troops into Equestria.

Thanks to his supreme knowledge of Chaos' strengths and weaknesses, he was sent on a mission to find where Chaos was hiding out, and he had detected large quanities of dark energy beneath the surface. So he had gone down to the surface and attempted to discover Chaos, but he was knocked out, no doubt by one of Chaos' nastier minions, and now look at where he was.

Now that his thoughts had been collected, he looked for a way out. He was binded to a large dark pole with a strange disk-like object over his head. No doubt human technology. When it came to the technology factor, humans were light-years ahead of us. he thought. When you think about it, we actually don't need technology. Hard work and friendship's all we need to last. He tried to use his horn to dismantle the device he was strapped to, but to no avail, as his magic seemed drained.

"Finally woke up." a voice said. "Funny, I was just thinking about forcefully waking you up. I'm going to have to punish Cotta later. I told him to hit you hard enough to knock you out, but light enough to make you wake up after a few minutes."

"Is that even physically possible?" Eagle Strike replied, attempting to distract the voice.

"How DARE you try to distract ME?" the voice boomed, and suddenly, Chaos emerged from the shadows in his true form. He was a pitch-black alicorn with glowing red eyes, like his normal horse manifestation, but he was much larger and had a horn and wings, and there was a dark aura around him. His tail ended with a sharpened blade and his feathers were sharpened to be able to slice straight through solid diamond, which in the human world, Eagle Strike knew was close to impossible.

"It's time to make you suffer for all the suffering the Sol have caused me." Chaos yelled. "When I press that button (he pointed at a red button), this machine known as an "electric chair" to the humans will send a continuous stream of electricity through your body much stronger than a bolt of lightning. I've specially designed this to not kill you, but instead torture you for a short period of time where we will then move onto the next stage of torture."

"This is blasphemy!" Eagle Strike said about the description of the first stage of torture. "This is madness!"

"Madness. . ." Chaos said, choosing his words carefully. "This is CHAOS!" He kicked the button, causing the electricity to start electrocuting Eagle Strike.

Even through the electrocution, Eagle Strike was thinking. The ropes were weakening due to the electricity, and then he had a brilliant idea. It was a rule for a just-in-case moment to carry a camaflouged small pouch containing an item that could help them in a tight situation. Eagle Strike carried a variety of human items in his pouch, and one of them just happened to be a thing humans called a "Swiss Army Knife" that he stole from a store one day in the middle of the night. Hey, why not take advantage of Earth while it remained a secret?

Lightning fast, Eagle Strike pulled out her Swiss Army Knife and sliced the ropes apart, obviously surprising Chaos. Using that one moment of surprise, he summoned all his training that he and the other members of Sol had to go through, and rammed Chaos into a wall. But Chaos wasn't done yet, and he charged and fired a laser from his horn, and Eagle Strike did all he could to dodge them.

Eventually, after he felt enough time had passed and was too tired to dodge anything else, he finally decided to reveal the true purpose of his mission.

"So you think that Celestia is stupid enough to think that one horse, even an alicorn, could defeat you." he panted. "And that she wouldn't think that you would send your minions to attack and weaken Equestria." He was breathing real hard now. "So I was sent here as a decoy." Chaos was slowly beginning to understand. "Your troops will be careless and unaware, as you had told them Sol was going after you." Chaos began to figure out which direction this was going. "The might of the forces that we have defending Equestria will overpower your troops as we have the element of surprise." Chaos grew angry at how a petty horse less than a tenth of his age had completely outwitted him.

"You haven't won yet." Chaos said. "Once I get word out -"

"Oh, you won't get word out." Eagle Strike said. He reached into his hidden pouch and pressed a button. Stole that from some dark field of houses. There were so many humans there, but after some experimenting, he discovered that the large supply of balls she took were explosives that could create fireballs that destroyed pretty much everything in a certain blast radius, and he always kept one handy. He had strapped one onto the entrance to the labyrinth, and that button she pressed detonated the bomb, causing a massive cave-in and trapping everypony inside.

"You expect that pathetic trick to work on me?" Chaos laughed. "I can teleport out of here -"

"You may have set up a magic field in this room where only you can use magic, but I experimented with these bombs and applied a magic dampener to them should I have the need to stop someone from using magic." Eagle Strike said. "Oh, and the magic dampener spell is found in the Canterlot Archives, the Starswirl the Bearded wing specifically."

Chaos finally got so mad that he couldn't use any magic, even his most powerful spells that he charged at Eagle Strike, but Eagle Strike used his anger and thoughtlessness against him and grabbed his body, reversing the momentum and sending him straight towards the electrocution machine.

After Chaos crashed into the machine, Eagle Strike kicked the red button, causing Chaos to be electrocuted repeatedly. After a short amount of time, a conveniently placed door appeared next to the machine. With Chaos dizzy and confused, Eagle Strike decided to leave while he still could.

* * *

In the next room, he discovered a light yellow pegasus with a pink mane and tail.

"Well what are you doing here?" he asked while cutting the rope apart with his horn.

No response.

"So you don't want to talk." he said, trying to slice open a particularly strong rope.

No response.

Stopping, Eagle Strike tried to figure out why this pegasus wasn't talking. Suddenly, he remembered the mane six, who were made up of Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Fluttershy. He mentally facehoofed himself. How could he have been so stupid? It was obvious this tied up pegasus was Fluttershy.

"It's okay, Fluttershy." he said. "I'm here to help."

"How do you know my name?" Fluttershy whispered in a barely audible voice.

"Excuse me?"

"How do you know my name?" she responded, slightly (or not-so-slightly) louder.

"Pardon me, but I can't hear you."

"How do you know my name?" she said in actually audible voice.

"No time to explain." he replied. "Right now, we need to get out of here before Chaos recovers and comes after us."

"I remember a black pony trying to stare me down." she said in a low voice. "But then I couldn't hold my eyes open any longer and I fell over."

"Don't worry about." Eagle Strike said. "Just focus on staying still so I can cut open these ropes." One rope was giving her a hard time, so he reached into his hidden pouch to see if anything would help.

"Screwdriver, smoke bomb, honestly is their anything in here useful?" he said while looking through his stuff.

After finally settling on the lighter, he burned the rope and then used his horn to push the rope downwards, giving Fluttershy enough room to be able to squeeze out.

"Thanks for saving me." she whispered.

"No problem." Eagle Strike said back, but when he heard noises coming from the other end of the door, he said "Let's scramble before Chaos decides to stick both of us on an electric chair."

Fluttershy cast him a glance that said "What are you talking about?"

"No time to explain." he said. "We just have to get out of here. . . somehow."

"Why don't you just use your magic to teleport us out of here?" Fluttershy whisper-asked.

"I used a magic dampener spell, so no one can use magic." he replied. "And there must be some other way out of the room." He started prodding at the walls of the room, when he suddenly hit his head somewhere below the ceiling.

"What the - a force field?" he said.

"Perhaps if you were smart enough to figure the trick of this room out already, you wouldn't be here right now, and trust me, you don't want to be caught by me, do you?" a voice spoke. Chaos.

Fluttershy curled up into a ball while Eagle Strike turned to face Chaos.

"Well, it certainly took longer to recover from that than I expected for a lord of chaos and master dark magician." Eagle Strike said, his voice full of mockingness. "But for your information, while you were talking, I used another one of my gadgets, and your in for a big surprise.

A smoke bomb rolled up at exploded a cloud of smoke it Chaos' face and Eagle Strike then grabbed Fluttershy and flew up, stabbed the forcefield with his horn, creating a large spreading crack that destroyed the forcefield.

"At normal power, your magic would be even with the dampener spell, but I figured that since you were just released, the spells you cast were strong enough to hold on their own, but be weaker." Eagle Strike said. "So if there's something up there important enough that you would create a forcefield to protect it, then I'd say that it's something darn important. . . like the exit." He sent a kick to the ceiling and it opened like a trapdoor. "Come on, Fluttershy." he said. "Let's go find your friends."

* * *

Everypony was worried about Fluttershy. It had been a while since they had entered the maze and it was only shortly after they entered the maze that Fluttershy disappeared, but they only pondered over what happened to Fluttershy if there was no other problem at hand.

"This damp air is terrible for my mane." Rarity complained.

"This is no time to worry about your hair, Rarity." Twilight said. "We need to focus on the task at hand: find Fluttershy." Suddenly, she saw a figure flying over them. Who could be flying? she wondered. Discord took away our horns and wings.

The figure landed in front of her, and she noticed Fluttershy was clinging onto him. And that was when she noticed that not only did this strange pony have wings, but also a horn.

"Are you an alicorn?" she asked.

"Yes." the mystery pony replied.

"But I thought alicorns went extinct thousands of years ago, except for Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, and that's why they became the rulers of Equestria." Twilight said, obviously confused.

"That's what was told, but in actuality, alicorns have been living underground for the past thousand years." the mystery pony said.

"Living underground?" Twilight asked.

"It's an old saying that means 'Gone into hiding.'" he replied.

"Oh." Twilight said. "Well then that means we have a lot to catch up on, but we can save that till after we finish up here."

"That's sort of the problem." the mystery pony said. "There's a magic dampener and a cave-in, so there's no way out of here until we find another way out."

"Why's there a magic dampener?" Twilight asked.

"That way, Chaos can't get out and get word to his army." he explained. "The magic dampener will keep him from using telepathy to contact them, nor can he transform. He can't teleport to escape, but we can't either. So what we need to do here is that we need to stall Chaos out long enough for the battle to have started."

"When will we know that the battle started?" she asked.

"Once the sound of battle begins, but right now I have to focus on other things." the mystery pony replied. "I'll let Fluttershy explain the rest. I gotta go." He flew away quickly and quietly and disappeared into the depths of the labyrinth.

"So who was that pony?" Twilight asked Fluttershy, who had now walked up to her.

"His name's Eagle Strike." she replied. "He saved me when I was trapped and tied up in some dark room, but then this scary looking pony came in and the two had a fight, but we managed to escape."

"So what do you reckon he's talking about and who is the 'Chaos?'" Twilight wondered.

"I don't know, but I hope what he said isn't true about us being trapped here." Fluttershy whispered.

"I hope so too."

The two retraced their steps, and to their dismay and horror, the entrance truly had been blocked. There was no way they could get out through the entrance they came through, so the only thing that they could do now is to explore and see if they can find a new way out.

* * *

Eagle Strike had used almost every gadget he had experimented with in his hidden pouch. But he had one secret weapon. With an earthly associate, he had created a bomb designed to only be used in the most desperate situations. Mixing a human bomb with secret magical spells practiced by the alicorns could turn into a deadly combination. This bomb in particular was a magic counter; it could destroy literally anything magical within a several mile radius and eliminate the effects of any negative magic spell known to alicorns, as well as return any living creature within its blast radius to his or her original status, whether it be healing several wounds, or returning someone in disguise to their normal body, and even counter Discord's corruption spell. He knew he had only one chance to use it, and he couldn't waste that chance.

He moved his horn around carefully until he finally detected a weak spot. In the labyrinth, the stone is strong, and it only weakens under the weight of an army (or a very powerful force). Now he didn't know which army this was, so he stabbed part of the weak spot, and it tore very little, and he could hear the voices of Discord and the rest of the chaos army. Well, why not give them a surprise. he thought, chuckling to himself. He tore a hole into the weak stone (unicorn horns are made of strong material; they hold under heavy force) and placed the magic bomb in the hole.

Pulling out a microphone, he announced something to everyone in the labyrinth, whether it was friend or foe.

"A little piece of advice;" he said. "Take cover now, and when I mean now, I mean NOW!" Just as he said the final "NOW!", he manually activated the bomb, causing it to automatically explode, creating a large shockwave rapidly spreading across the cave, tearing down walls and magic as it went, healing everyone in the labyrinth, but just as planned, much of the power was directed up, and the explosion upwards, as humans would say, would be like detonating a nuke inside an about-to-blow geyser, causing the very "fabric" that lengthed together the wall was utterly obliterated by the ridiculous amount of energy. And this ridiculous amount of energy was fired straight upwards into the chaos army's camp, demolishing it and reducing it to pieces in mere seconds. The army had not been prepared, and about 70% of it was destroyed, with Discord saving himself as he sensed the energy surge flying upwards.

However, not all of the power was directed at the camp. Some of the power mixed with the magic and it had a large affect on the labyrinth itself, knocking everypony, even the mighty Chaos, down, but the hole in the ceiling showed that there was a new exit to the labyrinth.

"What in tarnations was that?" Applejack wondered after recovering from being slammed into the ground.

"I don't know, but I'm just glad to have my wings back." Rainbow Dash said, doing flying tricks in the air with her newly-recovered wings.

"It seems that the things that Discord took are with us again." Twilight noted. "So then that means. . . what exactly? That we won? That we lost?"

"Maybe Eagle Strike will be able to explain." Fluttershy said. "Oh wait a minute - Where is he?"

"I thought I saw something fly up to the ceiling before it collapsed, but I thought it was just my imagination." Rarity commented. "Who is this 'Eagle Strike' you speak of?"

"He's an alicorn that saved Fluttershy." Twilight said.

"I thought Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are the only two alicorns left." Applejack said.

"I'll explain later." Twilight replied. "Let's just go look for him. Everypony, go!"

* * *

Above the ground, a team of Sol agents and royal guards were prepared for battle, but what they descended upon was nothing they could've imagined in their wildest dreams.

A chasm was where they expected the chaos army camp to be. It seemed that something had caused the landscape to change dramatically. Thousands of choas army soldiers littered the ground.

"Somebody tell me what in Eqeustria happened here?" Swift Steel, Chief of Security for Eqeustrian Events and a member of Sol, demanded.

"It seems that an minor earthquake happened by the looks of it." fellow member of Sol, Mayli, commented. "There must have been a disturbance in the ground that caused the chasm here to appear and took out most of the chaos army by the looks of it.

"Okay." Swift Steel said. "Get me a team of highly trained horses. Who knows what could happen once we reach there. For all we know, this is a trap and they're trying to lure us in, so we need to use caution when planning our move."

Once the team of highly trained horses had been assembled, they slowly approached the rows and rows of dead chaos soldiers. When they saw that no one there was alive, they turned their attention to the cavern.

Swift Steel looked down and saw it didn't go to far down, so he and another pegasus named Storm Edge decided to go down and investigate. The two lighted down and began their investigation. At once, they noticed that the rocks didn't weren't vaporized, but instead collapsed in a heap. They also noticed features that distinguished this chasm to be a new entrance to what was once known as "the labyrinth."

"I know Chaos' lair was hidden deep in the labyrinth, so if the labyrinth collasped, then. . ." Storm Edge said.

"I wouldn't count on it." Swift Steel answered before he even finished the sentence.

"Well, still, what do you think happened to Chaos. And what happened to Eagle Strike?" Storm Edge replied. "There must be something that'll tell us what happened to him. Something in the rubble, there must be something."

"Since you insist, how about I look for Eagle Strike and you get a team to help you investigate the rest of this place." Swift Steel said. "At least bring Black Wing. He's one of the strongest alicorns in Sol."

Storm Edge left him and headed back to the surface to gather a group of ponies to assist him in exploring while Swift Steel began looking around.

Where would Eagle Strike be? he wondered. But that was just when he noticed a purple unicorn lifting rocks using magic.

"What are you doing?" he asked, but that was when he noticed Eagle Strike trapped under the large pile of rocks.

"Oh, I'm clearing out the rocks so we can get out Eagle Strike." she said while lifting up boulders with her magic, obviously draining her.

"You know Eagle Strike?" he asked.

"Of course. He saved Fluttershy when she was kidnapped by someone he referred to as 'Chaos'."

Swift Steel paled, though nopony could notice that under his armor.

"Hey, what are you wearing?" the unicorn asked. "And why did you ask if I knew him? Do you know him?"

"He's a friend of mine." he replied. "But you might need a little help getting him out, so I'll get help." He rushed away and bumped into Storm Edge's group.

"I found Eagle Strike." he said. "But he's trapped under a pile of rocks and we need to get him out. Follow me." He led the team to the pile of rocks where the unicorn was moving rocks.

"You didn't tell me that you had that many ponies to help." the unicorn panted. "I've been working through exhaution ever since you left, and now you mention that you have an entire squad of ponies to help." As if to illustrate her point, she fell over from exhaution.

"Well, we better get to work." Storm Edge noted, looking at the moderatly smaller pile of giant rocks.

* * *

Twilight had passed out from overworking her body, but that didn't mean her mind blacked out. She was exerting so much magic that the magic had caused her to stay in a sub-conscious state where she would be trapped in a limbo-like place.

"Where am I?" she wondered as she looked around the strange, hazy, purpleish area she was in.

She heard a voice, but she didn't recognize it. It said "To save the land is is in your hands, the hooves of all, and the hands of all."

"Hands?" she asked, but the voice continued.

"Trust is an important bond, but true it may be, too much is a deadly thing."

"Stop speaking in riddles." she said. "I can't understand you."

"Darkness greets you at every turn, and be careful of whom you trust. the voice said as the entire landscape began to fade. "Remember, trust is of the essence, yet choose whom to trust safely." The entire scene disappeared and she was left in complete darkness.

* * *

"Where am I?" she asked, getting up.

"Twilight! You're awake!" Applejack said. "You've been out for a while."

When her eyes cleared, Twilight saw she was in the middle of a circle formed by the mane six ponies (minus one, of course) and four of the ponies that she had saw in the ruins of the labyrinth.

"To introduce everyone, my name is Swift Steel, she's Mayli (pointing at a lavender alicorn), he's Storm Edge (pointing at a dark blue stallion), and he's Black Wing (pointing at a black stallion)." the pony in the armor said.

Twilight looked around.

"So, how long was I out?" she asked.

"A couple hours." Black Wing replied. "You passed out almost immediatly after we entered. Then after we got Eagle Strike and you out, you started mumbling some weird stuff about riddles and something called 'hands', whatever they are."

Twilight remembered her vision.

"You woke up almost immediatly after Eagle Strike." he continued. "Then that's when the past meets the present."

"So, what happened while I was out." Twilight asked.

"Well, we sent scouts out." Swift Steel said. "None of them reported any activity going on. It seemed as if the chaos army disappeared right off the face of Equestria. They sure weren't anywhere where we could find them. Must have had some secret hideout base that we never knew about. Well, the best we can do is to keep looking for them and getting prepared for their next attack."

"Actually, I think I know exactly where they went." a voice said.

The voice belonged to Eagle Strike.

Unidentified date: Washington, D.C.

Several unidentified flying objects and unidentified hostile troops had suddenly appeared to the immediate east of Washington, D.C. and appeared to be marching towards the city. A large task force of troops had been dispatched with a group of fighter pilots to fly in and assist the troops in battle.

"I think I see them." Lieutenant Davidson said. "They're unlike anything I've ever seen before." A sort of reptalian humanoid creature made up the bulk of the invading army, but littered among the army were fierce monsters including cyclops carrying spiked clubs and wearing war paint. Large, but not as large as a cyclops, tusked, ferocious trolls with clawed hands. Fire-breathing dragons that can stand on two legs made up most of the rear of the army, giants spiders carrying reptalian humanoids and trolls made up most of the infantry with undead horses making up the rest. Undead creatures mixed in with the trolls and reptalian humans and they seemed very similar to the zombies seen in horror movies. A Chinese dragon-chimera seemed to be in charge of the army, and he seemed to be able to manipulate pink clouds and make buffalos do ballet.

"Am I seeing things?" Private Murray asked.

"No, private, you are not." the commander of the mission, Colonel Kentucky said, staring at the scene before him.

After seeing first-hand what they were up against, the colonel was considering aborting the mission, but in the end follow through with the plan.

"Okay." he said. "Remember, we have to take them on from all signs and keep them distracted until the fighter jets come in. Then we'll take em all out in one fellow swoop. So troops, move out!"

After getting into position, the army was going through the woods, so soldiers were stationed in trees and when the signal was given, they opened fire.

In the first attack, at least a hundred reptalian humanoids were killed, about forty trolls, and around thirty undead horses were taken out. However, the larger targets, namely the cyclops and the dragons didn't die from the bullets that struck their skin, and they started swatting the trees (or in the dragon's case, burning them to a crisp), taking down a large number of soldiers. But then, another round of machine gun fire hit the cyclops, only they were aimed at the eyes, causing them to die and fall over, crushing members of the invading army. The soldiers aimed at the not as heavily armored parts of the dragon's body, namely the belly area. But this didn't do much do the dragons, and they flew into an uncontrollable rage, and began aimlessly attacking every human in sight. Lieutenant Davidson was knocked out of a tree and bled to death on the ground as every other soldier was too busy trying to save themselves from the dragons. Private Murray tried to run away, but he was crushed by a dragon's foot, and even Colonel Kentucky didn't make it out of that battle alive, who died by being burned to a crisp by a dragon. No one survived, not even the fighter pilots who came in just after the last of the soldiers were finished off. The remnants of the chaos army marched towards Washington, D.C., and they were determined to take over it. Little did they know that their minds were about to be blown when they discovered something they never expected to find in the world of humans. . .

Many cell phones recieved a cryptic call telling them to go to a specific location by an unknown caller. But all of the recievers had one thing in common: they were all bronies, and after learning the truth about their favorite TV show, they hurried to go to where they were told to go. . .

**Once again, submit OCs if you want. Also, here is the OC sheet (for ponies):**

* * *

**Name:**

**Type (Earth Pony, Unicorn, Pegasus, or Alicorn):**

**Cutie Mark:**

**Appearence:**

**Personality:**

**Background:**

**Other:**

* * *

**And here's the OC sheet for humans (bronies):**

**Name:**

**Age:**

**Appearence/Description:**

**Clothing:**

**Personality:**

**Long-range weapon (I'll explain later):**

**Short-range/melee weapon (I'll explain later):**

**Background:**

**Other:**

* * *

**Also, I referenced a couple things in this chapter (namely a certain famous scene in a movie), so see if you can spot it. (Hint: It's extremely obvious IF you watched the movie in question, and probably if you didn't too)**


	4. Demon

**A/N: Keep submitting more OCs. As they say, the more, the merrier. OC sheets are on the previous chapter. Both humans and ponies allowed.**

**A/N: I might change the rating of this story to M, but I'm not sure if I should yet, though, so what do you think?**

**Chapter 3: Demon**

A lot had happened since Twilight and the rest of the mane six were trapped in the labyrinth, the biggest was undoubtly the revelation Eagle Strike brought forth: there is a world that is not Equestria, and there is a race of intelligent, sentient beings in that world called humans. Twilight was shocked by this. She had never imagined that there was a world that wasn't Eqeustria, and she never expected them to be so advanced, assuming what Eagle Strike said was true.

When they had reached the Sol headquarters, the leaders of Sol (known as the Council) and the mane six all participated in a vote to whether they should convert to using technologial means to assist them in performing their tasks. In the minds of all who voted, they had already chosen their answer. Unaminously, they decided that they should NOT use human technology, reason being that should they use them, ponies would become lazy and become just like the humans.

After the hype about the new world had ended, Eagle Strike put forth his idea that Chaos would use Earth as his ultimate base, able to store and transfer armies across Equestria without being seen by an Equestrian. He also brought up his idea to use humans to help the fight on both Earth and Equestria. In the end, the council ultimately agreed to the plan, and they had sent various Sol agents to speak with the humans. But that would take a while to complete, and in the mean time, the Sol were helping the mane six learn about the ancient history of Sol and the alicorns, but they were also operating behind the scenes to make sure everything was going well, because if something went wrong, the results could prove disastrous.

* * *

Twilight was being checked for any possible diseases she may have caught or if Chaos left something on her that could reveal their location to him.

"Twilight, may I ask you something?" the nurse who was checking Twilight asked.

"Yes, what would you like?" Twilight replied.

"Well, we need to put a magic tracker on you." the nurse said.

"A magic tracker? What's that?" she asked, confused.

"Well, I think it's best if we let Eagle Strike explain to you." the nurse replied. "Trust me, you'll agree once you hear the potential consequences if you don't."

The nurse left the room and soon was replaced by Eagle Strike.

"Let me explain to you why we want to put a magic tracker on you." he said. "You see, I've found that your magical abilities are unheard of. And after studying ancient alicorn texts, we have learned that someday, somepony with strong magical capabilites will bear the responsibility of being the host one of the ancient gods."

"Ancient gods?" she asked. "What does that have to do with me?"

"The ancient gods aren't at full power." he explained. "If a unicorn or alicorn has enough magical capabilities, they can host the ancient gods themselves. There are two ancient gods: the deity of light, known as Spirit, and the deity of darkness, known simply as Demon. Any of them can enter a host body if the host has enough power. This means at any time, you can be temporarily controlled by either Spirit or Demon, and you'll have no memory of the time you were controlled, unless the pony controlling your body deems it fit that you have knowledge of when you were controlled. So, if we keep a magic tracker on you, we can learn when you're being controlled and we can contain it if that is necessary."

Twilight understood that they couldn't take the risk that she could be controlled by Demon and let him wreak havoc without them knowing. But still, she had a couple questions.

"But why doesn't one of them just take a pernament host body?" she asked.

"When they control a host body, their energy is drained, so they can't hold control over a host for a long period of time." Eagle Strike replied.

"Also, I thought Chaos was the true dark deity of the world." Twilight said. "So who is Demon?"

"Demon and Chaos. . ." he said. "Demon and Chaos are the same, yet they are different. Chaos is half of the true deity of darkness, Nemesis. He represents the need to create chaos all over Equestria. Demon is the other half of Nemesis, and represents the power to destroy. Demon's sheer power overshadowed Chaos' cleverness and he was crowned the dark deity by ancient ponies. But if Chaos and Demon were to come together, Nemesis would be reborn, and the world would be at his mercy."

Twilight gulped. Now she knew why they couldn't allow Demon to escape, even if it was only hosting a body.

"There is a way to help prevent Demon getting into your mind, but the only way to do that is to cleanse your heart of all feelings of darkness and filling it with true friendship." Eagle Strike continued. "But for now, you'll need to keep a magic tracker on so we can contain you if we need to."

Twilight submitted to getting a magic tracker and soon afterwards, she was released.

* * *

An alicorn by the name of Crown Ace showed her to her room. It didn't have much in it, only a bed and a few books for her to read.

"Thanks, Ace." she said. She had gotten to know Ace during her stay at Sol headquarters. No one called her Crown Ace, but instead called her by her nickname, Ace, so Twilight did what everyone else did and simply called her 'Ace'.

After checking out her room, she left and went to spend some time with her friends.

* * *

When night fell, Twilight had gotten into bed. But when she fell asleep, she wasn't experiencing the dreams she had before, but instead, she heard a voice.

"If you come to me, than I can give you your precious Spike back." the voice said as smooth as possible. "And I can tell you everything about Sol, even the things they refuse to tell. So, what do you say?"

Evil is a tempting thing. It finds your weaknesses and exploits them to help get it one step closer to its ultimate desire.

"Well. . ." Twilight considered. Having Spike back was of utmost priority, but was it safe to trust this voice?

"I've made my choice." she finally said. "But you have to promise to give Spike back."

"I promise." the voice said.

"Pinkie promise?" Twilight asked.

"What's that stupid promise again?" the voice said. "Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye?"

"And you better keep it." she adviced. "Or else Pinkie will be on to you. Forever." She said the last word in the same fashion that Pinkie says the word when she is being deadly serious, and I mean, deadly serious.

The voice sighed. "Fine, fine, fine, now just come over here!" This time, Twilight felt a gravitational pull and she was pulled into the darkness against her will. Even if she didn't want to make a deal with the voice, she still would have been pulled in, and so no event could have happened to stop it from happening.

* * *

The Council may have said they wouldn't use technology to help them work, but that didn't mean that they couldn't set up a facility to blend magic and science, two very similar things, together. Thanks to an anomynonus human responding to a challenge set up by the Sol to create a system that can read brainwaves and transfer information from them to figure out many different things, including heart rate, blood pressure, IQ, and, most importantly for the ponies, magic level (though that was an addition added by Eagle Strike). They were monitoring Twilight's magic level, and suddenly, something disturbing drove the entire facility into panic.

Ace was in charge of monitoring the magic level of Twilight, but then she noticed something strange. Her brainwave patterns were becoming stronger, and her magic level was quickly rising. He couldn't be sure that this wasn't just Twilight waking up, but when the magic level kept skyrocketing, she knew exactly what happened.

"Snake, come over here." she said, beckoning for the green pegasus to come over. After a dramatic pause, Ace continued. "I think it'd be a_ very_ good idea for you to get a team of highly trained fighters to go to Twilight's room. _Now_!"

Snake looked at the screen and immediatly went pale. The system used a series of numbers to represent how powerful the magic readings are; 0 - 1000 are between non-existent and terrible, 1001 - 2000 is bad, 2001 - 3000 is okay, 3001 - 5000 is normal for a unicorn, 5001 - 6000 is a well-studied unicorn, 6001 - 7000 is an alicorn, 7001 - 8000 is a well-studied alicorn, 8001 - 9000 is on par with Princess Celesta and Princess Luna, and anything over 9000 is godly. Earlier, Twilight's readings were resting at around 6800, unheard of from a unicorn. When Ace had called Snake over, her magic level was rapidly flying up through the 7000s and by the time Snake looked, her readings were over 9000.

"Is her power level _**OVER 9000**_?" he yelled in disbelief.

Ace nodded gravely. "Now do you see why I need you to get there now?" But Snake was already out the door while setting off alarm after alarm to tell everypony in the building to evacuate until the situation had been dealt with.

* * *

After assembling a team of highly trained ponies, they burst through the doors to her room and discovered her levitating while being surrounded by an aura of darkness.

"So the worst has happened." Snake muttered. "Attack, now!"

Each pony had a weapon and they drew all their weapons out and attacked Twilight, or at least Twilight's body. But all of their weapons, whether it be a sword, spear, dagger, whatever; nothing worked.

Suddenly, Twilight's body began shooting dark beams of magic from its horn. When these beams struck somepony, they would be knocked out. Much of the squad was knocked out by the beams, and then the remnants of the squad watched in complete horror and helplessness as the body opened its eyes, revealing to pure black-purple eyes, and suddenly, a shockwave emerged from its horn and everypony was forced to the floor. That was when the body chose to speak.

"I am Demon, the true dark god." it boomed. "If this is the might the ponies of the future can muster, than this battle shall be over before it began. With my sheer power alone, I will overcome Chaos' army and destroy him. Then his so-called minions, Discord and Night Mare Moon, will either choose to serve me or be destroyed in the same fate as their master. The world will crumble under my feet, and soon, I will be known as the true dark god, stronger than any light they have. You will all either serve me or die, and when the time comes, I know what choice you'll make." Demon knew what they were thinking. No, we'll never join you! or You think we're going to give into you? Ha, fat chance. But then, he felt his grips on the host body weakening, and so he decided to put in one cliche-ish phrase: "Soon, you'll feel the wrath of Demon himself!" Then his grip finally slipped, and the dark aura disappeared. Everything was back to normal. Except the unconscious still were out and Twilight was laying on the floor.

"So the rumors are true." Raymond said as he slowly walked up to Twilight.

"Yes. She really is the one who can host the gods." Snake replied, looking at Twilight's body.

That was when Twilight woke up.

"What happened?" she asked, feeling slightly dizzy.

Raymond and Snake exchanged a glance that said, _Should we tell her the truth?_

In the end, they decided to explain in the morning, and they simply told Twilight "Just go to sleep. We'll explain to you what just happened in the morning." And so Twilight went back to sleep, but couldn't help wondering What did happen that they don't want me to know about?

* * *

In the morning, Twilight trotted up to a secret room that Ace told her to go to when she woke up. When she entered the room, she saw the Council gathered in the room. As soon as Twilight got settled, the meeting started.

"You may be wondering why we called you here." Snake said. "We called you here so that we can discuss something of the utmost importance with you. You see, we need you to practice a new type of magic to prevent what happened last night from happening again."

"What happened last night?" Twilight asked.

"You were used as a host body for Demon, the dark god." Mayli explained. "For a short while, Demon inhabited your body, and so he controlled it, allowing him to do things he couldn't do in his weakened spirit state."

"So, what did he do in my body?" Twilight asked, trying to squeeze out whatever information she didn't know yet.

"I was in charge of monitoring your magic levels." Ace said. "In the middle of the night, your magic level started skyrocketing, and that's when I sent Snake to assemble a team of fighters to check on you to make sure you weren't hosting Demon, which you were."

"When we got to your room, you were already being controlled by Demon." Raymond continued. "We tried to attack him, or more like your body, but none of our attacks worked. Then he started firing dark magic from your horn. Most of the attack group was knocked out by that attack, but then he, or one could say your body, fired off a dark wave to knock us down and then he revealed his evil plan to us. He planned on overthrowing Chaos' army and then destroying Chaos and possibly his minions, Discord and Night Mare Moon."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Twilight asked.

"But then he said he would destroy the world and everypony in it." he finished.

"So, basically, I was controlled by Demon, who then took out an entire squadron of Sol agents, and then announced that he would destroy the world." Twilight said, trying to make sure she had everything correct.

"Exactly." Swift Steel said. "Therefore, to prevent this from happening, we would like start training you to keep unwanted spirits out of your body. However, it takes a lot of training and a lot of hard work."

"Well, since now I know the consequences if I don't, I'll do it." Twilight said. And though she didn't say it, she looked forward to learning new things and this was the perfect opportunity to practice her magic.

"Great." Eagle Strike said. "We'll start as soon as possible, but you should talk with your friends, because once we start, you'll be unable to see or speak with them until your training is over."

Now Twilight had reservations about the training, but she knew it was for the better.

"Okay. I'll tell them about it." she said, trotting away.

"Did you mention what the training is to her?" Ace whispered concernly to Eagle Strike once she left.

Eagle Strike shook his head, earning him a concerned glance from everyone on the council. All he did in response was to say "Sometimes, it's better to learn on your own."

* * *

**What is the council worried about with Twilight's training? Find out in the next chapter(s)!**


	5. Mind Games

**A/N: Need more earth ponies and humans!**

**I watched the Canterlot Wedding episode yesterday. IT WAS AMAZING.**

**Chapter 4: Mind Games**

Twilight had just left a meeting with the council. They had told her to go talk with her friends to tell them about the training to protect her mind from unwanted deities trying to get in and use her as a host body temporarily.

The first pony she met was Applejack, who was trotting through the halls of the headquarters.

"Hey, Twilight." she said. "Heard the council called you for some secret meeting. Wondered what it was about, so I went to see if I could figure out what you were all meeting about."

"That's very nice of you Applejack, but I'm fine, except I need you to do something." Twilight said hurriedly. "I need you to tell the others that I probably won't see them or you for some time."

"Why, exactly?" Applejack asked, confused.

"No time to explain. I'll tell you once this is all over." Twilight ran off back down the way she came, leaving Applejack to comprehend what she said.

* * *

Applejack knew Twilight was hiding something. No doubt about it, because honestly, it was pretty obvious.

After gathering the rest of the mane six, they immediatly headed straight towards the main meeting room of the council. Applejack knocked on the door. Hard.

The council had just been enjoying some tea when they heard knocking on the door.

"Strange." Mayli said. "No one usually has anything important enough to discuss with us, because we're keeping track of anything potentially dangerous within the Sol headquarters, so I wonder what's going on."

Snake answered the door, and when he saw the mane six at the door and none of them, not even Pinkie Pie, looked happy, he immediatly shut the door.

"We have a problem." he said. Immediatly after saying that, the door was knocked again, but this time, it was more like a kick. And then another kick. And another kick. On the fourth kick, the door finally fell down, and the mane six entered the room.

"That took an awful lot more kicks than I expected." Applejack commented.

"Of course. That door is made of reinforced steel." Raymond said. "What did you expect?"

"I expected it to fall at most on the third kick." Applejack muttered to herself while Rainbow Dash started getting mad.

"Okay, stop trying to change the subject, and let's get down to the REAL reason we're here!" she said. "What happened in that meeting with Twilight that caused her to be in such a rush and mention that we won't see her for a while?"

"Can't say. Classified." Eagle Strike said, trying to approach this situation calmly.

"That makes no sense what-so-ever!" Rainbow Dash yelled. "There's no way that you set up a classified file on this subject in the past 10 minutes!"

Everypony was silent as the meaning of her words sank in.

"Anypony has the right to know any unclassified information that has not been recorded as a classified file." Mayli murmured. The council realized they had been beaten.

"All right." Ace said reluctantly. "Settle down. We've got a lot to talk about."

* * *

What the mane six didn't realize is that Twilight was just a few steps away. The council hid a portal in a very clever spot. Behind the tapestry in the council room, there is a plain wall. Nopony that looked there would think that there was something secret about the tapestry. If they were clever enough to look behind them, they would have saw nothing. No, the real location of the portal is on the back of the tapestry. Near the mid-low area of the tapestry, blending in with the picture of a bright blue ocean. That is where Twilight currently was; the place the portal leads to.

Twilight had just entered the room, when suddenly, all the lights went off and the room went dark.

What she didn't know is that she had just entered a type of magic dome, allowing the caster to create many things in it, but the council were using it to try to see if their theory about Twilight was correct.

"Okay ponies, we need to simulate some scenarios to push the limits of Twilight's abilities." Eagle Strike said as he paced down the room. He mixed the rooms attributes with the magic dome spell while connecting the entire system to a computer. He had gotten very good with human technology and was confident in the rooms abilites to perform effectively.

After getting confirmation that everything was ready and going, they started the simulation.

* * *

Twilight was looking around when she suddenly saw Discord.

"Discord! What are you doing here?" she asked.

"I don't know? Perhaps I'm here to cause some chaos. Or maybe I'm just in your mind." Discord replied.

"But if your causing chaos, then why are you here?"

"Perhaps I'm here to cause chaos. . . inside your mind." he said ominously.

The Queen Changeling suddenly appeared behind Twilight.

"We've met before, not too long ago, haven't we?" she hissed as she teleported in front of Twilight. "You rescued that princess Cadence and then went on and tried to defeat me with the stupid Elements of Harmony, but you never got that far."

"It's fun causing chaos inside minds." Discord said. "Not as fun as eliminating all order in Equestria, but it isn't time for that yet, so your the next best thing to cause chaos with." He spoke and acted like he was simply playing around with her.

"Just get to the point, Discord!" Twilight snapped.

"What fun would that be?" Discord asked. "Perhaps if you come a little closer, I might tell."

Wanting to get it out of the way, Twilight moved forwards towards him and prepared to fire a spell, but Night Mare Moon appeared behind her and knocked her over before she could finish casting the spell.

"I can't believe you fell for the oldest trick in the book!" she crowed. Just then, dark clouds started forming and Chaos descended from them.

"Well, well, well." he said. "What a surprise. I expected you to have died in the labyrinth, but you somehow evaded me and joined up with the Sol."

Twilight was pinned down and couldn't do anything except for watch him go on.

"You may have avoided me one time, but you will not slip away from me this time!" he continued. He then walked up to Twilight and began charging up a spell.

"This can't be good." Twilight murmured.

Chaos fired the spell, and suddenly, Twilight felt like something inside her just snapped, and she realized that she could hear a voice. Though it was very soft, she could still hear it as if it was as clear as day.

"Use a shield." it whispered. "Do it."

Following the advice from the mysterious voice, Twilight cast a shield spell, but to her surprise, rather than creating a regular shield, it created a shield that sent off waves of light. The waves struck Chaos, Night Mare Moon, Discord, and the Queen Changeling and they all vanished.

Twilight stood up and she wondered who the voice was. Just then, she heard it again, only louder.

"I'm in your mind." it said. "Look deep."

And so Twilight looked deep in her mind and saw a beacon of light. She wasn't aware of the real world currently; she was immersed in the reality of her mind.

She approached the beacon of light and she saw a pure white alicorn with a golden mane. The alicorn looked up at her and said something to her.

"Allow me to explain what's going on. I suspect that you'll be interested in what I have to say."

Twilight thought about the offering, but her curiousity got the better of her and she walked up to the alicorn.

If anypony was observing Twilight at the time this was happening, it would look like Twilight had just fallen over into a deep sleep or some level of consciousness.

* * *

The council was watching Twilight's progress the whole time.

"I believe that our theory about Twilight was correct." Eagle Strike said, monitoring Twilight's brain waves carefully. "She seems to be in a sort of deep sleep, but her brain waves continue to function as if she were awake."

"But are you sure this was a good idea?" Ace asked. "If there was to be any danger in the next few weeks, then Twilight wouldn't be awake, and so that puts both her and others into danger."

"It's a risk we're going to have to take." Snake replied. Right after he said that, a pegasus messenger burst into the room.

That's twice in one day. Swift Steel thought, but what he said was "What is the problem?"

"Chaos' army has been sighted!" the messenger said.

"Where?" Snake asked, suddenly more alert than ever. "Canterlot?"

"No. . ." the messenger replied. "Ponyville."

* * *

**As I stated earlier, I need more earth ponies and humans. Oh, and if you have any ideas for the story, you can tell me about them and I'll consider adding them. Thank you for reading this.**


	6. Attack on Ponyville

**Keep submitting OCs.**

**Chapter 5: Attack on Ponyville**

"Ponyville?" Swift Steel said in disbelief.

"Yes." the messenger replied.

"Where's the army right now?" Ace asked.

"Nearing the Everfree Forest." the messenger said. "No more than another hour of walking till they reach the outskirts of Ponyville."

"Our farm's on the outskirts of Ponyville!" Applejack exclaimed. "What will happen to my family if we don't get there in time." She couldn't stand to picture Big Macintosh, Granny Smith, and Applebloom to. . . She didn't finish that thought.

"Judging by the location that we are in right now, there's no way that we'll be able to reach Ponyville before Chaos does." the messenger said. "We're too far a way to get there."

"I can fly there even if we're on the other end of Equestria. It shouldn't take me too long to get there." Rainbow said confindently.

"Oh, and what will you do when you get there? Tell them to prepare? Prepare what? Ponyville's never been involved in a battle before, and by the time you get there, it'll be too late for them to evacuate. Even if you do get there, there's not much you can do to stop the invasion." Ace replied. "It wouldn't change the outcome of this one bit. Chaos has us in a lose-lose situation and you all know it."

There was silence for a while.

"Actually, there is a way to get to Ponyville quick enough to prepare for the incoming danger." Eagle Strike said. "We've been researching portals and how they form and where they lead, and our base seems to have been intentionally built in a large cluster of portals that can be opened and closed at will. Although there are no portals leading to Ponyville from here, there's a portal on Earth that leads to Ponyville not too far away from a location one of the portals around here takes us. If we take the portal to Earth and then take another portal from there, we may be able to reach Ponyville before Chaos."

The silence continued as what he just said started to sink in. Finally, Rainbow Dash broke the silence.

"So what are we waiting for?" she asked. "Let's just find that portal and go!"

"But, there's no telling what's going to happen, so there is a chance that the portal will collapse on us. Portals can't take to much before they collapse, so sending entire armies over a portal at once is about as close to commiting suicide as you can get without actually having a guaranteed chance of death." he responded.

"Oh." Rainbow said.

"We can only send so many over at a time, and this can really delay us." Eagle Strike continued. "The best we can do right now is to be able to reach Ponyville and prepare for the battle, but it's not like we can send an entire army over there; the portal can't continuously send ponies over because it would eventually fall apart from repeated usage. I'm not sure how many we can take. We can take as many as we believe the portal can hold, but no more than that."

"So, I recommend that you get ready while you still can." Swift Steel advised. "As you should know, every second could cost somepony their life. You never know."

* * *

After preparing, a select group of ponies plus the mane six gathered around a portal while Eagle Strike reviewed notes that Sol scientists had equipped them with, along with several weapons.

"I'm not sure I like the idea of hurting others." Applejack said. "It just feels wrong to have to do it this way. I mean, we've never actually killed somepony before, only turned them to stone or blasted them away."

"There's no time for questioning whether it's right or wrong to do this." Snake said. "There's only one way out of this, and you can't hesitate when you need to stay focused. It may cost you your life." Something told Applejack that he said these words from experience.

"Sorry to break up the conversation, but as Swift Steel said earlier, every second could cost somepony their life." a tall earth pony named Shadowblaze said. "And if we don't hurry up, we may not have time to get everypony out of Ponyville before Chaos reaches there."

"Your right." Applejack quickly said. "If we don't get to Ponyville, then everyone will be killed. So we better hurry."

There was no more talk as they entered the portal and they felt their body slowly broken down atom by atom until there was no trace that they had been there at all.

* * *

After emerging from the portal, Eagle Strike whispered the plan to the ponies that was pretty much the entire battle strategy. Rainbow and Applejack would tell the mayor about the approaching attack force, and then they (with the help of Fluttershy) would escort them through the Everfree to Zecora's hut, where they would hide until the battle was over. Upon reaching the hut, Pinkie, who should have already been brough there by Fluttershy while Rainbow and Applejack were speaking to the mayor, would help brighten up the townsfolk, because it could be concluded that they wouldn't be happy or cheerful if there was going to be a battle in the town. While Pinkie was getting everything ready for the party she was planning, Fluttershy would convince Zecora to let people into her home during the battle. All this should be finished while the townsfolk were just getting news of this, and then Fluttershy would fly back, get Rainbow Dash and Applejack so they could take the townsfolk into the forest. Once everypony got there, Rainbow and Applejack would head back to help with the battle, along with every other pony that went there that didn't have any special duties. After gathering, Snake, Ace, and some other stealth ponies would sneak behind Chaos' army with their amazing stealth skills, so when Chaos' army began attacking, they'll take it by both sides and give it little room to manuever, effectively giving them the advantage.

When the ponies memorized the plan, they moved on.

"Be careful on your feet." Snake said. "You never know when a human will appear. Who knows what would happen if they see us." In the silence of the dense woods, they had to be extra careful so that any nearby humans wouldn't hear them.

Finally, Eagle Strike said "We're here." a green portal opened up in front of them. "This should take us to Ponyville."

They entered the portal while silently reviewing the battle strategy in their head.

* * *

Luckily, the portal led straight to the Ponyville library, so there wouldn't be a huge uprising when they appeared.

When they looked around the library, they found Spike sorting out the books.

"Spike?" everypony exclaimed at the same time.

"What? Don't you know that I don't leave the library much?" he asked.

"Yes, but Twilight said you were kidnapped." Rainbow said. "So, how are you here?"

"Oh right. I WAS kidnapped by some black alicorn-pony and taken to some underground lair, but it collapsed, and I managed to escape because everypony else was trying to escape the rockfall." he replied.

"He must be talking about the labyrinth." Swift Steel said, casting a quick glance at Eagle Strike.

"By the way, where's Twilight?" Spike asked. "I mean, I see Rainbow, Fluttershy, Applejack, Pinkie, and Rarity, but I don't see Twilight."

"How should I explain this?" Eagle Strike said. "Let's just say that Twilight made contact with a god and is currently in coma because of this."

"Wait a minute, you never told us that!" Rainbow said.

"Well let's just say that it might worry you that Twilight is in coma, and we didn't want you to quit the mission before it even started." Eagle Strike replied.

Rainbow didn't have anything to say to that.

"Anyways, Spike. I think it would be a good idea for you to get the Reference Book for the Elements of Harmony and see if there's anything in there that could possibly tell how to recreate the Elements after they're destroyed." Eagle Strike continued.

"Wait, the Elements were destroyed?" Spike asked.

Eagle Strike mentally facehoofed. "Mayli, why don't you fill Spike in on the details and then come back to meet us." he said.

So, while Mayli filled Spike in on all of the important events up to the present day, the rest of the group scattered to go on their various missions.

* * *

Rainbow Dash and Applejack ran down to the mayor's house.

"Rainbow Dash, Applejack, where have you been?" she asked when she opened the door. "We've been looking for you forever."

"It's a long story, but there's something really important that we have to tell you." Rainbow Dash said. "The fate of Ponyville is in the balance."

"If it's that important, then you really should come in." the mayor replied. The three of them went into the house.

After getting settled, Rainbow Dash began, and basically ended at the same time.

"The bottom line is, there's an army of evil ponies marching down this way and they'll be here in about another half an hour, and if they get here, they will probably kill everypony in the town just to find us." she said.

Silence.

"So, your saying there's an army marching towards Ponyville." the mayor said slowly, as if she couldn't fully comprehend what was just said.

"I would think that if we looked through the telescope in Twilight's house, we could probably be able to see them." Applejack said.

If anypony were to be standing outside of the mayor's house at the time, they would see a very strange sight. Two missing ponies galloping through the town square while the mayor was doing her best to follow them.

When they reached Twilight's house, the mayor peered into the telescope. Just as Applejack predicted, if the telescope was turned to be facing Sweet Apple Acres, it was possible to see Chaos' army.

"What in the name of Celestia?" the mayor said when she saw the army. "This really is serious. I must go make an announcement immediatly!" She quickly ran out the door and towards the town hall.

* * *

While this was happening, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie were at Zecora's place.

"So, would you please let us in your house while we're waiting for the battle to be over?" Fluttershy asked Zecora.

Zecora thought about this. Finally, she said "I will lend you all my room, for refusal may bring upon a terrible doom." She spoke these words as if she knew more than what she was telling.

"Thank you." Fluttershy said quickly before dashing away and telling Pinkie Pie that they got room.

"Awesome!" Pinkie yelled. "This is going to be the best party ever!" If Fluttershy was not nearly incapable of thinking bad thoughts about others, she would probably have thought that Pinkie was the only pony to find happiness in the bleak situation that they were in at the moment.

While Pinkie set up her party items like cake, streamers, and balloons (unfortunetly, her party cannon was currently supposed to be used in the battle after the Sol heard about its performence in the battle against the Changelings during the wedding of Princess Cadence and Shining Armor), Fluttershy headed back through the forest to lead Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and the rest of the town into the forest. Of course, by this time, the whole town had already been alerted and were already waiting at the entrance to the Everfree Forest.

* * *

Many ponies were unsure about the safety of going into the Everfree Forest, but they didn't have a choice, so they went along with the plan.

"Okay everypony, listen up!" Rainbow Dash said. "We're going to go into the Everfree Forest and wait until everything's over so we can get back to our normal lives. And you basically will all die if you don't come with us, so you better!" Everypony got the point now and all headed into the forest behind Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack.

* * *

After reaching Zecora's hut, Rainbow Dash and Applejack headed straight back to the town square where they laid in wait for Chaos' army to appear.

"It should be soon." Eagle Strike whispered. He was hiding in the leaves of the library.

Just after he said that, the first wave of Chaos' army appeared. What they saw was surprising. Instead of terrified townsfolk, there was nothing in the town. It was almost as if they had deserted it, and left everything behind.

Taking advantage of the one moment of shock, somepony yelled "Attack!" and then ponies jumped out from various hiding spots and began the attack on Chaos' army.

Applejack leaped from behind a tree and slammed into a two-legged reptile known as a reptar, knocking it off its feet and slamming it into the ground. She then proceeded to kick it in the face many times with her powerful hind legs.

Swift Steel charged into battle, drawing his two longswords. To explain how that happened was that Sol weaponry is enchanted; it can be summoned at will and perform attacks as if it were being held. So with his two swords, he quickly slashed through a row of giant spiders, took out several undead horses, and sliced a troll in two.

Rainbow Dash used her signature flying moves to fight Chaos' army, such as spinning around them, flying through them at supersonic speeds, etc. She was doing pretty well, until she was going so fast that she slammed into a troll's claws.

"Rainbow!" Applejack called as she saw Rainbow fall over. Kicking her way through hordes of enemies, Applejack made her way to Rainbow Dash's limp body.

"She's hurt!" she yelled. Somepony heard her and soon, a bunch of medics rushed over and began tending to Rainbow Dash's wound while various Sol soldiers defended them from harm.

At this point, the second group of fighters (the stealth group sent behind Chaos' army earlier) came into the fight.

"This may be the toughest battle I've ever had." Snake said through gritted teeth as he was becoming overwhelmed by the hordes of trolls and reptars that were coming at him, but then, Raymond and Shadowblaze appeared and took out the trolls and reptars right before they were about to rip Snake to pieces.

"Thanks for the help." he said.

"No problem." Raymond replied. "Just try not to get yourself killed next time, okay?" It was nearly impossible to tell if he were joking or not.

Shadowblaze launched into the blur of fighting ponies and monsters while Raymond and Snake stuck together and killed many monsters. However, the waves of monsters kept coming and the ponies were getting tired.

"I'm not sure how long we can hold our ground." Shadowblaze said before leaping into a tangle with an ogre.

Storm Edge used his sword to rapidly strike a dragon until it finally went down, but only moments later, another dragon took its place.

_It's almost as if they're holding back some troops to come in later._ he thought. Then he realized that's exactly what Chaos was doing. _He was using his troops to weaken and tire us, and once we're tired. . . he'll release everything he's got at us. _he realized. The realization came with a shower of terror and dread when he saw that his theory was correct.

Discord, Night Mare Moon, and the Changeling Queen all flew in and began unleashing utter demolition onto the weakened ponies. Swift Steel was knocked over by a powerful blow from Night Mare Moon and the Changeling Queen brought in her Changelings to create even more enemies for the Sol to fight.

"We're doomed." Ace said as she, Shadowblaze, and Storm Edge were pushed close together by the seemingly infinite number of monsters streaming in. Everypony else was also having the same problem.

Suddenly, beams of light started shooting down and upon hitting a monster, they started disintegrating. More beams rained down, and the ponies could only look up to see who was taking out so many monster and saving them at the same time. Who they saw startled them.

It was Twilight.

* * *

**I finally finished! New OCs that have been submitted in the past couple chapters will be introduced soon. Other than that, please review. Thank you.**


	7. Origin

**OCs still can be submitted.**

**Also, sorry to be a liar, but no new OCs will appear in this chapter**.

**Chapter 6: Origin**

"Is that Twilight?" Shadowblaze asked.

"I think it is." Swift Steel replied.

The fighting had stopped. There was no reason for the fighting to continue. Not even Discord could bear the light from the blasts of light Twilight was firing.

After the entire army was destroyed by the attack, Twilight fell over and rolled down the hill she was standing on.

Immediatly, Rainbow Dash and Applejack rushed towards her.

"Are you alright, sugarcube?" Applejack asked as she nudged Twilight's body.

Twilight's eyes fluttered open. "What just happened?" she asked. Suddenly, she remembered what had happened. After she fell unconscious, she met somepony named Spirit. After learning about the roots of everypony in existence, Spirit detected Chaos' presence, so she gave Twilight some energy to wake up from her own mind to help her friends. Then after she saw them getting overwhelmed, she tapped into Spirit's fast magic pool to take out the entire army. Unfortunately, using too much magic took its toll on her and she became very tired.

She got up and said "I'm fine."

"What happened?" Swift Steel asked.

Twilight explained what happened.

"I see." Eagle Strike said. "So since our predictions are correct, then that means that we can speak with Spirit, can't we?"

"Well, assuming I can access her right now, I suppose it is possible." she replied. Immediatly after, Spirit appeared next to Twilight, seemingly out of thin air.

"Where'd you come from?" Applejack asked.

"I listened to your conversation and came out." Spirit said. "Now, as Twilight should know, there are some things you should know. Your playing with things that you know nothing about. Nopony truly knows the full tale of the end of the gods, and trust me, it's something you need to truly think about."

"What do you mean?" Eagle Strike asked.

"Get everypony here, and I'll explain what I mean." Spirit replied. So they got the rest of the mane six and Spirit began his tale.

* * *

**P.O.V. Spirit, Recollection (Flashback)**

I was one of the creations of the Allfather. The Allfather is the creator of all things. I was created alongside Chaos, as the deity of light and good fortune. I controlled the sun and the two warmer seasons, spring and summer. Chaos was created to be my equal; to cause hardships to prevent there from being too much good in the world. He controlled the moon, and also fall and winter, so the sun isn't always out, constantly bringing light to the world. We were equal in power, so we couldn't overpower the other and cause more peace/war, because there needs to be both; one of those can't survive the other.

However, though everything seemed to be well, not everything was as it should have been.

The Allfather had a mortal enemy: Nemesis. At his prime, the Allfather would fight Nemesis every day. But one day, the Allfather managed to banish Nemesis, and the two of them were forcibly seperated through a spell the Allfather cast. However, as the Allfather weakened, his spell weakened, and one day, he told Chaos and I that his spell was fading, and soon, Nemesis would be able to invade the Light Realm, which is now modern-day Equestria. He told us to go to the Dark Realm and defeat Nemesis before he could invade, and so we went to the greatest blacksmith in the land to forge a weapon for us. After creating the sword itself out of dragon skin and celestial steel, the strongest steel in the land, we used our magic of light and darkness, as well as the sun and the moon, to create a magic inbetween; something Nemesis never knew about. And that's how the Twilight Sword came to be.

Arming ourselves with the Twilight Sword, we went to the Dark Realm to confront Nemesis. Nemesis never created any minions; his sheer power alone could destroy entire armies in seconds. It was easy to locate Nemesis, and when we did, we began having doubts about whether we could destroy him or not. But it was too late for doubts and there was no choice but to follow through.

**(Regular P.O.V.)**

"What is this?" Nemesis boomed. "Two ponies, and creations of Allfather, too. How interesting. I wonder how he'll react when I send him your heads."

"Well, that's not going to happen!" Chaos said, drawing out the Twilight Sword.

"A sword?" Nemesis laughed. "A SWORD? Pathetic! You think a SWORD can hurt me? REALLY? You two must have inherited Allfather's stupidity." Well, at least part of what he said was true. No weapon could hurt Nemesis, nor could any magic. But the Twilight Sword was not a normal sword or was enchanted with a magic known to Nemesis. It was made of the best in the land and a very special magic. Twilight magic.

Spirit and Chaos' minds seemed to come together into one as they charged at Nemesis. Nemesis laughed at their supposedly futile attempt to harm him, but his amusement soon changed to surprise and then to fear when he realized that the weapon was emanating magic, but it wasn't light or dark magic.

The two ponies flew up and threw the sword at Nemesis. The weapon impaled him in the forehead, and to his horror, Nemesis saw that his body was dissolving.

"No." he breathed. But then it started to turn into a roar. "No! No! NO! NO! NO! I refuse to be defeated!" But then, his body fully dissolved and two dark spirits appeared in their place. One of them flew away, but the other charged straight at the two victorious ponies. It was too quick to defend against with the Twilight Sword, and they felt their consciousness slowly slipping away from them.

**(Back to Spirit's P.O.V.)**

When Chaos and I woke up in the Allfather Palace Infirmary, I noticed that the Twilight Sword had disappeared. I also noticed that Chaos seemed different. A little more aggressive than usual, a little more argumentative than before, and more secretive. After a while, I knew something was up, so I did a little investigation to try to figure out what was going on, and I found that when Nemesis died, his spirit lived on in two forms; a physical form and a spiritual form. The physical form created Demon, who represented Nemesis' great power, while the spiritual form would rest in a pony who shared characteristics with Nemesis' cunning. When Chaos asked if he could take my shift for making sure the amount of peace and war were balanced, all the pieces of the puzzle finally came together. Those two dark spirits we saw in the Dark Realm were Nemesis' two spirits; the one that left was Nemesis' power, and the one that attacked us was Nemesis' cunning. It latched onto the nearest strong source, but my light suppressed it. However, Chaos didn't have the dark-resistant advantages that I had, and he had no chance against Nemesis' cunning. I quickly agreed, and rushed down towards the armory. From what I knew, Nemesis' power had the magic resistance that Nemesis was known for, meaning that it was possible to hurt Nemesis' cunning with magic. Grabbing a light sword, I ran back up to where Chaos was. He wasn't there. Immediatly, I knew where he had went.

I quickly ran down the hall to Allfather's room, and just as I expected, Chaos was battling with Allfather.

Nemesis was the only pony or deity ever to match Allfather's strength. But despite his strength, Chaos was much nimbler and managed to dodge all of Allfather's attacks while landing several of his own.

**(Regular P.O.V.)**

"Chaos!" Spirit roared, and Chaos turned around to face her. That gave Allfather enough time to strike him against the wall. Unfortunately, before Chaos was slammed against the wall, he managed to stab Allfather.

Spirit ran up to Allfather, and saw that the wound the sword inflicted was major. She tried to use magic to heal it, but it didn't seem to work.

"It's unhealable." Allfather whispered as he lay on the ground. "A curse he put on the sword; no wound it inflicts can heal through magic. Clever boy." He coughed. "But listen. There's something of utmost important you must know. One day, in the far future, Nemesis will be revived, and only six ponies can stop him. I need you to wait and watch for those six. Prepare for the time when Nemesis will be revived. You'll know when. You'll feel it. But remember, when that time comes, you'll have to fight Chaos again. Do not hesitate to fight. Just do it." And with those final words, Allfather breathed his last.

Spirit looked around her. In the span of a few minutes, her entire life had been destroyed. Picking up Chaos' body, she slowly walked out of the room.

There was only one place to leave Chaos. She placed his body in a seal, and uttered a few words. Suddenly, a obelisk rose from the ground and surrounded Chaos. Upon reaching its full height, symbols appeared on the obelisk, locking Chaos there until he gained enough energy to break free.

Turning her back to the obelisk, she slowly walked away. Away from the palace, away from all the memories. Spirit sent off one request to the blacksmith that created the Twilight Sword. It said "Create five swords and then place them by my resting place." Upon sending that note to the blacksmith, she took one last look at the world. Who knew when she would see it again. After finishing her last look at the current world, she created a crystal cocoon around her body, leaving her in a deep sleep for many millenia until darkness came again. . .

* * *

"Soon, we were forgotten, but our subjects remembered. In fact, all ponies evolved from these subjects. They wrote extensive passages about us, but they were dismissed as legends by future ponies. But, while Chaos and I still laid in rest in our respecitve prisons, we created ponies to continue our goals while we laid at rest. I created Celestia and Luna to carry on the raising of the sun and moon, as well as to make sure peace still existed in the world, while Chaos created Discord, the changeling queen Chrysalis, and Night Mare Moon to try to do their best to defeat who I created, with Night Mare Moon to take out Luna and Chrysalis to take out Celestia. However, all of us deities powers have grown since the time of legends, and you must be careful if you are to continue your fight against Chaos and Demon. They are powerful, and you don't know what they're planning. Think about this story and how you can't make the mistakes of the past. Heed this story and remember it. Remember this and learn from it. You will need it." Spirit concluded.

Everypony was a bit overwhelmed by all this.

"So, what are we going to do?" Shadowblaze asked.

Spirit looked at everypony. "We're going to find the Twilight Sword."

* * *

**Please review and tell me about what you think of this story. Thank you.**


	8. Vulkus

**Keep reviewing and submitting OCs. Once again, there's a lack of earth ponies and humans.**

**Also, a fun fact is that when I wrote the previous chapter, I just typed while I set Love is in Bloom to repeat in the background. So I basically typed all of the last chapter with Love is in Bloom in my head.**

**In addition, the character Shadowblaze is owned by Fallout4Ever101, the character Little Strife is owned by Timefather64, the character Armageddon Beat belongs to StrikingStorm666, and Forgotten Flash is owned by AimBot.**

**Chapter 7: Vulkus**

Upon setting off to find the Twilight Sword, everypony realized it would be harder than they thought.

"The sword has been missing since before the dawn of Equestria." Shadowblaze said wearily. "How the buck are we going to find it when it could be anywhere?"

"Well, the last place I saw the sword was in the Dark Realm." Spirit said. "So, isn't it reasonable that the sword never left the Dark Realm?"

Everypony stopped.

"Why didn't you mention that before we set off walking in the opposite direction of Ponyville?" Snake said, looking pretty annoyed.

"Well, the Dark Realm was destroyed and no doubt the destruction of the Dark Realm caused the Twilight Sword to return to the Light Realm, which as I mentioned earlier, is now Equestria, so the only place it could be is somewhere in this land." Spirit replied.

"Geez, I hope we get some message telling us where to find this sword!" Raymond joked. "That would save a lot of time!" Just as he finished saying that, a gray cross-eyed pegasus flew down in front of them.

"Hi Derpy!" Pinkie Pie said.

"I have a letter addressed to a certain spirit." Derpy said. "But I haven't seen any ghosts recently, so I decided to go looking for you all because maybe you could help, with how you saved Ponyville and all."

"Thanks. I think we know who this 'spirit' is and we'll be sure to deliver it to her or him or whatever he or she is." Swift Steel said, taking the letter.

"Well thanks for helping!" Derpy replied before flying off.

Swift Steel picked up the letter and read it out loud.

"The Twilight Sword is found with the five others it beats in harmony with." he read.

"Well, what in tarnations does that mean?" Applejack asked.

"I think that means its where we can find five other. . . things that bear similar signatures to the Twilight Sword." Spirit replied. "Say, perhaps something made of the same material?"

"What are the chances of five things to be made of dragon skin and celestial steel with the same signature as the Twilight Sword, which is enchanted by a magic that even today is unknown to the unicorns and alicorns of Equestria?" Eagle Strike asked.

"I'd say around, oh I don't know, negative one million?" Snake said sarcastically.

"No, seriously." Eagle Strike said. "Equestria is HUGE! How in Equestria, literally, are we going to find something made of the exact same material as the Twilight Sword?"

"The materials made to create the Twilight Sword are very rare in these times, and the chances of something being made with those materials recently is about as likely as being able to fly to the moon." Spirit replied. "So it must be somewhere from ancient times, and I have a hunch on where it could be."

"Well then, where?" Raymond yelled.

"Just follow me." Spirit said, walking away. Everypony followed her.

* * *

A jet black unicorn stood before a towering black obelisk. The same obelisk in which Chaos was imprisoned in, and the resting place of Chaos' spirit. Chaos hadn't broken free of the sealing spell just yet. Part of his spirit was still locked in the obelisk.

The unicorn didn't want to do it, but he knew it was the only way to truly learn the truth about what truly happened that night. The night his parents had been killed.

Moving closer to the obelisk, he pressed his horn against the cold stone and felt the dark power of Chaos rush into his mind. Not many ponies could take the darkness of Chaos and still be in control of their body, but the unicorn had a strong mind. It's hard to put yourself together again after having your life destroyed, and it takes a strong mind to do so.

"What is this?" Chaos' voice hissed in surprise. "Somepony who has the will to defy my power? I've never seen this before. But anyways, in order for you to summon me, you must need a very good reason to. Tell me, what do you want?"

"I wish to learn about who killed my parents." the unicorn said solemnly.

"Ah, I see that your playing on dangerous grounds." Chaos said. "Do you know what your doing? Your calling upon me, the lord of chaos, just to answer one simple question? Are you really sure you want to do this?" He acted as if he actually cared.

"Yes." the unicorn replied.

"Then I'll tell you, but under one condition." Chaos responded. "But I don't guarentee you'll like it."

* * *

After a while of trekking, Spirit finally stopped at some ruins.

"We're here." she said.

"Where are we?" Shadowblaze asked.

"Welcome to the ruins of the Allfather's Palace." Spirit replied.

"What?" Everypony said at the same time. But Spirit didn't answer. She was too lost in thought, probably comparing the ancient Allfather's Palace to the ruins of it.

"Um, what are we supposed to be doing here?" Raymond asked, breaking Spirit out of her thinking.

"Oh. Well, I suppose we just see if the Twilight Sword's here." she replied absentmindedly.

However, the ruins were pitch black, and there were a few problems thanks to that.

"It's so dark." Fluttershy whispered, trembling.

"Perhaps if we simply cast an illumination spell, we would be able to see easier." Twilight said as she cast the spell, causing a light to come out of her horn. "Now, come on, everypony. Let's get out of here before Chaos gets here!"

Inside the ruins, there were many images of battles and peace and ancient ponies, but the most interesting painting was a painting of a six ponies.

"This dust is terrible for my mane!" Rarity complained. "I just got it done perfect today!" Nopony enjoyed Rarity's constant complaining about the conditions.r

"Isn't that us?" Pinkie Pie asked. "Because I think I can see you Twilight, and you Applejack, and you Rainbow, and you Rarity, and -"

"I think we get it, Pinkie." Rainbow said. "But still, what importance does that have to right now?"

"These paintings were prophecies." Spirit said. "If you're on one of them, then there's something in store for you. Especially since these were recorded thousands of years ago."

They came to a cross in the road.

"Any idea what we do now?" Swift Steel asked.

Suddenly, they heard a noise, and turned around. Seeing nothing, they settled down. However, the noises kept coming, and finally, Shadowblaze saw something run down an empty corridor.

"Guys." he said. "I think we're not alone here." As if to demonstrate his point, giant snakes and skeleton ponies slowly surrounded the band of ponies.

"I see what you mean." Snake said, slowly moving back.

The monsters were about to pounce onto them, but suddenly, a voice rang out.

"Dark Lance!" A spear of magic flew out of nowhere and lodged into a giant snake's back. This caused the monsters to spin around.

Taking advantage of this, the band of ponies charged at their former attackers, taking out several of them in just a few moments. However, reinforcements were arriving, and there was no way they could take out such a large attacking force.

"Psst. This way!" they heard somepony whisper. When they looked, they saw a blue unicorn with a baby blue mane.

"This way?" Applejack asked.

"Well no duh this way! What did you expect? That way?" the pony pointed towards the enemy reinforcements.

"Okay. Point made." Applejack said as everypony made a run for it.

When they finally thought they had outran the enemy, the blue unicorn finally stopped.

"I think they're gone." he said.

"For starters, how about you WHO you are and WHY you're here and WHAT your doing here?" Storm Edge asked.

"I'm Little Strife, but you can call me Strife." the pony said. "And by the way, why do you think I'm here in the first place? What's here that I or any other pony would want?"

He's talking about the Twilight Sword. Spirit thought. She knew that the Twilight Sword was here. She felt it the moment she came in.

"I have some connection with weapons." Strife continued. "I'm skilled with telummancy. I can control weapons, and I know there's something here. Something that needs investigating. There's a weapon in here that's too strong. And from what's been going on around Equestria, I have a feeling that something fishy's going on."

Spirit cast a glance at the rest of the group that said _Should we tell him?_

In the end, they decided to see if he was trustworthy or not before telling him.

Suddenly, everypony heard a voice that echoed through the chasms.

"My little ponies, hasn't it been a while since we've met. I don't believe we've met since that incident regarding the Elements of Harmony. I can see you've gotten yourself some new friends." Chaos appeared out of nowhere. "Well, let's see how your new friend likes seeing who we found in these very ruins!" Strife gasped.

Discord, Night Mare Moon, and Chrysalis walked in while carrying a young gray unicorn stallion.

"Who's he?" Shadowblaze asked Swift Steel.

"You don't know?" Chaos said, feigning surprise. "He saved you when you were about to be taken out by the first wave of monsters I sent to explore this place from top to bottom."

Twilight remembered the spear of magic that had came out of nowhere when they were just about to be killed by those monsters.

"A pity that Spirit's not with you. I would love to see the look on her face when I kill you all!" Chaos said.

Twilight was tempted to say "What?", but then she noticed that Spirit had disappeared.

"Now let's see what you're going to do now!" Chaos said.

_Where the buck is Spirit?_ she wondered. _And what was so important that she left before Chaos arrived?_

* * *

Spirit had slipped away before Chaos had arrived because she felt something wrong. Something had happened in the ruins, and she knew that when she felt a feeling that something bad happened, especially in a place like this, the results could prove disastrous.

Navigating the ruins with ease, she finally reached the palace garden. Stone walls and crumbling statues littered the grounds, but one thing stood out above everything in the garden. The black obelisk she trapped Chaos in.

Touching her horn to the obelisk, she felt nothing. Nothing at all. Which though anypony may have deemed as being perfectly normal, Spirit knew that Chaos couldn't had gained enough power to break free of the seal. Nopony could. That meant that somepony had willingly freed Chaos, and since Chaos was still in the castle right now, she knew that the pony that freed him was still in the castle. Somewhere.

She quickly cast a spell to scan for any unknown ponies, and she found one. He was close to where she had instructed the blacksmith to leave five more swords for the five ponies mentioned in the prophecies of Nemesis' return. Too close for comfort.

Quickly running through the palace, she burst into the room where the pony she detected was in. In there, she discovered a jet black unicorn.

"Do you know what just happened here?" she growled.

"What's with all the hostility?" the unicorn asked calmly.

"Chaos is free and who knows what's going on with everypony else in this place!" she roared. "Everypony in here either doesn't have the necessary means to free Chaos or has been with me this whole time, except for you! Equestria's in danger! What's your reasoning for all this?"

The unicorn seemed taken aback by all this information.

"I just wanted to find the truth." he murmured with nearly no change in his voice. "I never thought this would happen."

"Just come with me, and we need to get out of here." Spirit said.

"But I still need to learn the truth about who killed my parents!" the unicorn protested.

"Sometimes, sacrifices need to be made." Spirit replied as she turned to walk out the door. "You can't just wait here to get an answer. There are a hundred million different ways to get to a goal in times like this. One route may seem easy, but you can't abandon everything for it." However, just as she was about to leave, a pitch black and white alicorn burst in.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" he said. "Ah, Spirit. And Armageddon Beat. How nice it is to see both of you here where I can get you both at one time. As they say, two birds with one stone."

"What do you want?" the jet black unicorn, whos name was just revealed to be Armageddon Beat asked.

"Why I'm just here to take BOTH of you to Chaos!" the alicorn replied. "After all, you (he points at Armageddon Beat) have outlived your usefulness." He then slammed his hoof into the ground and a black line of darkness spreaded out to the two of them, creating chains around their necks.

The chains were strong and not even Spirit, even with all her magic, could not break it. But that was when she saw the rune on the collar of the chain. Reading the symbol on the chain, she recognized it as a dark rune.

The alicorn dragged the magic chain, and Armageddon and Spirit were forcibly dragged through the ruins.

* * *

It seemed as if Chaos was waiting for somepony. He didn't do anything, but he had cast a forcefield to prevent the ponies from being able to attack him.

Suddenly, a black and white alicorn burst into the room.

"Ah, Death. Do you have them?" Chaos said.

To Twilight's horror, the alicorn dragged in Spirit and some jet black unicorn she didn't know, bound by chains that still held, despite all their struggling.

"So, are there any last words, ponies?" Choas asked.

"Yes." Spirit said. "Only three." She then suddenly vanished, and to his surprise, Chaos saw the collar on the chain had been broken.

"GUARDS!" Chaos roared. "Watch every corner of the room. We can't let her get away! If anything moves, blow them to smithereens!"

Nopony moved in fear for being spotted by the guards, but there was one place they never bothered watching. While the guards were all focusing on the room, Spirit watched from above. Being an alicorn, she could fly, and none of the guards took note of that.

Carefully, she knocked a pebble lose from the ceiling. It fell to the ground, at a guard saw it. Just as she planned.

All the guards saw if and began shooting at Spirit, but she kept dodging the weapons and magic blasts they were firing at her, and continuously, they hit the ceiling.

Knowing that ceiling would fall soon, she grabbed Armageddon Beat and the unicorn captured by Chaos while dodging the guards attempts to kill her.

"Run! Get out of here!" she yelled at the band of ponies. "Go!" The ponies scattered at that point, and Spirit quickly reverted to her strategy of dodging everything shot at her.

Immediatly after that, Chaos yelled "YOU IDIOTS!" at his guards, mainly because they were shooting the ceiling in their attempt to take out Spirit. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN -" Fortunately, he never finished his sentence. The ceiling collapsed, crushing everypony in the room.

* * *

"What just happened?" Rainbow Dash asked as they burst out of the collapsing room. Looking at the large space above the massive pile of rubble, everypony could tell something was up there. Perhaps it was because of the magic glow that emanated from the space that even non-unicorns/alicorns could feel.

"Well, whatever just happened, we better do something fast." Swift Steel said. "Chaos may have been crushed, but he's not dead. He's going to get out sometime, and we better be finished with whatever business we have here before he does."

Leaping up, or just flying up, the ponies climbed into the open space above the remains of the smashed ruins, and to their surprise, it was very stable. If one was standing there, they wouldn't even be able to tell they were off the ground. However, the biggest surprise was the blinding light in one corner of the space. It was very dark, but they saw something bright in the darkness. A crystal.

Rarity was the first to dash to the crystal.

"I've never seen anything like this before!" she exclaimed. "I've never seen anything so gorgeous in all of Equestria!" It was true. The crystal was a blinding white, but it reflected the colors of the rainbow, as well as a bit of gold and silver. The crystal itself, however, was most peculier. It had several symbols etched on it.

"What's this?" Strife asked as he walked up to the crystal. "These symbols. . . I think I've seen them before."

Eagle Strike walked up to the crystal. "These look like runes." he said. "They were often used in ancient times to cast spells of extraordinary power. However, the method of casting runes has been lost to history."

"So, why would there be a crystal like this here with runes on it?" Shadowblaze asked. "I mean, this place is thousands of years old, but nopony has inhabited it since the days of legend. It seems impossible for anypony to have left this here."

"Unless it was somepony who lived here in the days of legend." Ace said.

"Your not talking about -" Shadowblaze began.

"Yes I am. This is where Spirit's spirit rests." she concluded.

Eagle Strike thought about and said that it was the most likely possibility.

"So if I recall, Spirit said -" Twilight said.

"That the swords she requested from the blacksmith to be layed where she rested." Ace finished. "Meaning that the other swords are. . ." She never finished that sentence. With that realization in place, the crystal began to shake.

"What's going on?" Swift Steel asked.

Suddenly, some of the crystal spikes jutting out from the crystal shattered, revealing that the spikes were actually swords.

"Five swords." Eagle Strike counted. "All dragon hide and celestial steel. And I sense strong magic in them. Could the letter be referring to this?"

Suddenly, part of the hilt of the sword came off.

"What's going on?" Storm Edge wondered.

From pieces of the swords, orbs began to form.

"The elements." Twilight realized. "They've been restored after being destroyed."

"Of course." a voice behind them said. "After all these years, I've been waiting for you six." They turned around to see an old stallion. He was a brown earth pony, but his coat was filled with ash, as if he had been forging for years.

"I'm Vulkus." he said. "I was the royal blacksmith for the Allfather, and the lord of fire. However, things went badly, and I don't really want to talk about it. But I assume you already know. Spirit would have told you or else you never would have came to this place."

"Wait, how do you know that Spirit was with us?" Ace asked.

"I can sense part of her spirit in her." He pointed at Twilight. "She kept a fraction of her magic in you to keep the link between you and her if she were to leave your body. You may have felt it before. But anyways, I assume that with her thinking process, the letter I sent to the mailpony to deliver to you would give her the idea to come to here."

"But why would you do that?" Twilight asked. "You're what we would call these days a deity. Couldn't you tell us yourself, or use magic to send it?"

"This is the resting place of Chaos and Spirit." Vulkus explained. "Chaos' full power was freed from the seal very recently, but he was already here before that. He sensed the power of the six swords and tried to find them. If I used any magic at all, he would sense it and all hope would be lost for the world."

"But there are only five swords." Applejack pointed out.

"After getting the message from Spirit, I forged the swords." Vulkus explained. "But when I was out collecting materials one day, I found the Twilight Sword near the crystal fountain in the palace gardens. I drew from its magic to enchant the swords. Each sword had a different magic in it, all when combined together would create twilight magic. After I discovered the sword, I had a dream and Spirit told me to take the Elements of Harmony and place them onto the crystal she enclosed herself in, along with the five swords I created and the Twilight Sword. But she knew the world needed the Elements too, so she had created another set of the Elements. I placed those deep in the ground for someone with a pure heart to find. After that, I did what she asked and placed all of those things onto her crystal, and they became one with the crystal, waiting for somepony to reawaken them. That is what you must do. You must take these weapons and stop all the evil that has been plaguing this land for centuries." One by one, the Elements changed from the orbs to the familiar necklaces and they each flew onto their corresponding with their respective Element. And then after that, each sword flew up and converted to fit each ponies personality. Pinkie's could now fire confetti, balloons, etc., Fluttershy's was blunter with another end used for healing, Rainbow Dash's was enveloped in electricity and the colors of the rainbow, Applejack's was strong, firm, and plain, and Rarity's was one of the most beautiful things imaginable, more of a piece of art than a weapon.

"Sorry to break the moment, but in case you haven't noticed, we're here in pretty much a maze that we don't have the map for, while evil dark deities attempt to kill us after we crushed them under several tons of the stone, and our guide plus two other ponies are also here, and we to find them before Chaos breaks free and gets to them!" Snake said. That pretty much told everything everypony needed to know about the situation they were in at that moment.

"Impatience!" Vulkus muttered. "Why is everypony these days so impatient? Can't anypony do ANYTHING without being interrupted these days?"

"Okay guys, let's all calm down." Ace said. "As Snake said, we need to get a move on. But if there's anything important that we need to know, it may pay off to listen to Vulkus."

"Okay." Vulkus said. "Anyways, there is something important you need to know. Spirit isn't at full power; Chaos is. So, if we ever face off against Chaos, he'll be stronger than Spirit. So we need to free the rest of Spirit's power from this crystal while we still can. We probably won't get another chance to do so."

"So then let's just break the crystal!" Rainbow Dash responded.

"The crystal can't be destroyed through normal means." Vulkus explained. "We have to connect on a spiritual level to Spirit and then cast a 'destroy' rune spell onto that crystal."

"Well how are we going to do that?" Eagle Strike asked. "The way to cast them have been lost for centuries."

"I'll cast the rune, but first we need to get a spiritual connection between one of you and her." Vulkus replied. "Twilight, you've already connected with Spirit. You already have a connection with her that you can take advantage of."

"How?" Twilight asked.

"Use your mind and focus on Spirit's image." Vulkus explained. "Think about her and use some of the magic she left in you to strengthen the connection. She'll feel it and respond, and then you'll reach a spiritual connection."

Twilight did what he said, and she felt something in her mind.

"Twilight? Is that you?" she heard Spirit say. "Because if it is, then I know what you're doing. Tell Vulkus to cast the rune. Now! Now would be a good time to unleash the rest of my power. Seriously!" Twilight could feel pain as Spirit cried out. "We're under attack. Armaggedon Beat and Forgotten Flash are helping, but we can't hold on much longer. Just do it!"

Vulkus seemed to understand what was going on and cast the rune onto the crystal. The crystal began to glow, and cracks formed. It finally cracked open and released a giant blast of light that quickly rushed out of the room and exploded in an area nearby.

"That must be where Spirit is!" Twilight explained.

"You think we don't know that." Strife muttered.

* * *

Rushing towards the area where they saw the light, they discovered a ton of monsters laying on the ground, defeated. And they saw Spirit and the other two ponies. And then from the light, a sword formed. It was a light purple with some gold with magic surrounding it. It was the Twilight Sword.

* * *

**That's it for this chapter. Review and submit OCs please.**


	9. Awakening of the Ancients, Part 1

**A/N: I don't understand why "Cupcakes" is scary. I read it, and I wasn't exactly scared. Using imagery may make it a more interesting (and possibly scary) experience, but even then, it isn't really scary. I mean, you can imagine it happen, but it's kind of hard to imagine Pinkie Pie butchering Rainbow Dash, and simply imagining the organs of Rainbow Dash spill out - sorry I don't think I should get into details. Read the story for yourself if you want to know more about it (I don't recommend it [P.S. It's rated Grimdark as F***]).**

**A/N: Oh, and with the OCs, I'm having a considerate lack of humans, but ponies are still accepted.**

**A/N: The character Wraith belongs to AimBot, and the Storm siblings (Storm, Vanish, Quake, and Strike) all belong to GhostHuntingLuxray456.**

**Chapter 8: Awakening of the Ancients: Part 1**

"Well, well, well. Hasn't it been a while, Spirit? I do believe we never did settle that score all those years ago. Oh, and Vulkus, too. I never suspected you would still be here. I've always thought that with your fire, you would prefer somewhere a little warmer."

The ponies turned around from their recent discovery of the Twilight Sword and turned to see Chaos.

"That rockfall you set off certainly was annoying." he said. "I think only Death and I survived. A pity, but nonetheless effective. I would've gotten rid of those guards anyways, being stupid enough to shoot the ceiling."

"Enough with the talk, Chaos." Spirit said. "Why are you here?"

"Oh you certainly are naive." he replied. "Isn't it obvious. I want your power, the power that defeated Nemesis long ago."

"Nopony in their right mind would give it to you!" Swift Steel yelled.

"Ah, that is correct." Chaos replied. "But would somepony not in their right mind do it?" A dark portal opened up and the skeleton of an earth pony rose from it slowly. Beaten up and withered, with a blue jewel lodged in its skull, it truly was a scary sight.

"What is it?" Eagle Strike breathed. The skeleton turned to look at him.

"Alicorns." it muttered before turning to look back at everypony in the room. "I am sometimes known as Hunger. Sometimes I'm known as Wraith."

Drawing up information from the ancient legend books she had studied during her stay at the Sol headquarters, she recognized the name Wraith. He had attacked many places in the history of Equestria, many as she would learn later involved alicorns. During the early days of Celestia and Luna's rule, he had attacked Canterlot Castle, seeming to get stronger from every unicorn he passed. However, Celestia and Luna repelled him and he was banished.

"I have never seen such a large collection of magic before." Hunger/Wraith, who was referred to as Wraith, noted. "Three of you hold unearthly powers, the power of the gods, and one of you (he points at Twilight) has more magic I suspect even Celestia can bear."

"So what?" Shadowblaze asked.

"Don't you see?" Wraith said. "I feed on your magic. With every drop of magic I absorb, I grow stronger. With all the magic in this room, you won't believe how much stronger I would grow! I might even be stronger than what the Allfather was like in his prime!"

"That's -" Spirit stopped mid-sentence. She could not deny that as a possibility. Somepony feeding off of the magic of Twilight and three gods could grow to be that strong.

"Wraith, please stop chatting." Chaos said. "I brought you here to keep them from using magic against me, not to have a friendly conversation."

"You really like to kill the mood don't you." Wraith muttered.

"Just stop talking!" Chaos ordered.

"Why should I?" Wraith challenged.

Chaos' horn glowed, and suddenly, several symbols danced around Wraith.

"Oh buck." Wraith said as he saw that the runes on his cuffs and collars began to glow a bright blue.

"Bind, constrain, restrain," Spirit read the runes that were glowing. "Forget -" She looked at the last one in horror. "Control."

"What were those alicorns thinking?" Vulkus fumed. "Those runes are forbidden! How could any of them think this was a good idea?"

While those two were too busy pondering over why the runes around Wraith were cast, everypony else could only watch as each rune traveled into Wraith's body, each sending a visible wave of pain through his body, despite him only being the skeleton of a pony.

"Now Wraith, don't let any magic go unnoticed. We don't want any surprises." Chaos ordered. This time, Wraith did exactly what he was told.

"Control." Eagle Strike breathed, truly understanding what was going on. "Each rune prevents Wraith from violently attacking other ponies. The Control rune is exactly what it says: it gives the caster full control over the pony it was cast on."

"Now that we've gotten that out of the way." Chaos said. "Give me the Twilight Sword!"

"Do you really believe we're going to give it to you?" Spirit asked. "Because you must be joking when you say that."

"You know I don't have the patience for this." Chaos growled. "You don't have a choice. I can even force you to if I wanted to. In fact, that's exactly what I'm going to do! I'm going to force you to give me it!"

"Oh I wouldn't think that would be a good idea." Spirit said.

"What do you mean?" Chaos asked. Just as he said that, a spear of magic flew from a dark corner of the room.

Wraith leaped upwards and tried to intercept the spear, but Spirit fired a rune at the spear. The rune read "Release". It hit the spear and the two spells joined to be one. Wraith's attempt to intercept the spear failed and he was struck by the spear. The rune on the spear glowed, and all the glowing runes on his cuffs and collars all faded to the usual dull gray engravings.

Now Chaos was in a rage.

"How dare you trick me?" he yelled. He stomped his foot and his three minions, Night Mare Moon, Discord, and Chrysalis materalized behind him. Drawing his sword, he charged at the band of ponies. However, he was stopped when he was struck by a string of bones. Looking at who cast that spell, to his infinite surprise, he saw Wraith.

He charged at Wraith, dodging every spell that Wraith cast, and managed to dodge every spell until he was right in front of Wraith.

Death charged at Chaos and knocked him over before turning to face Wraith.

"Why would he attack his own partner?" Twilight wondered, but that was soon answered.

"Wraith. Hasn't it been a while. Perhaps a thousand years or so?" Death said.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Wraith replied.

"I thought not." Death said. Suddenly, a scythe appeared out of nowhere and it circled the two of them and began to spin quickly, creating a tornado that just sucked up the two of them and disappeared.

"What just happened?" Storm Edge asked as he and everypony else in the room stared at where those two ponies had just disappeared.

"That traitor." Chaos muttered. "Discord, Night Mare Moon, and Chrysalis, go look for Death. As for you **(he's directing these words to the band of ponies)**, I suppose we're at an agreement right now. We need to find Death before anything else, so I suppose we can settle our differences for now."

_I wish._ Spirit thought. _But still, where could Death be, and why did he take Wraith with him?_

* * *

Death stood as if waiting for something to happen. Behind him, Wraith studied the pictures on the stone walls.

Suddenly, Night Mare Moon burst in.

"I thought you'd be here." she said. "Trying to hide where we wouldn't expect is just the thing I expected you to do."

"Ah, it's just like you to think that way, but I must say that going this close to the darkness is a bold move of yours." Death replied calmly. "I thought that you, the greatest thinker out of you, Discord, and Chrysalis knew that getting too close to the source of darkness was dangerous."

"Sometime you just have to do what you don't believe in to achieve a greater goal." Night Mare Moon said.

"Seems like you to say that." Death said. "I've always liked you for thinking that way. So I'll warn you about something: try to stay out of this business. Vulkus forged the six swords, but he also created eight other items. I bear one of them, the Scythe of Darkness, and if my scythe were to be near its counterpart, the Scythe of Divine Light, it will have devestating effects on evil. Same thing with the other six items. So be wary of your opponents; you never know if they have one of these items." As he finished the last sentence, to Night Mare Moon's surprise, he vanished, reappeared next to Wraith and teleported out of the room before Night Mare Moon could do a thing about it.

So all that was just a trick! Night Mare Moon thought angrily. Just some wild ideas by a desperate pony! But she never could get one thought out of her head. What if what he said has some truth in it? What then? But she couldn't worry about that now. Shrugging it off, she went back to report what she learned to Chaos.

* * *

Fluttershy wasn't scared by this whole situation. She was terrified. It took all her willpower just to keep herself from huddling into a ball and wishing that all this would end soon. She watched her friends, and they seemed to be tense, as if watching Chaos to make sure he doesn't do anything. However, just then, something strange happened that nopony could explain. Fluttershy had a premonition that something bad was going to happen, and soon.

Trying to imitate her friends, she looked at Chaos, trying to watch for any signs of movement. However, as she was observing Chaos, she had a sudden feeling that read He's going to strike right about now. Sure enough, just as Chaos drew his sword and launched himself at Twilight, Fluttershy managed to tackle her over and avoid Chaos' attack.

"What?" Chaos said. "How could you have known I would -"

"Her sword." Vulkus interrupted. "I would tell you more, but I would bet my hammer that you'd just use that information against us, so I won't tell you any more."

Just as he finished saying that, Night Mare Moon ran into the room.

"Death has escaped with Wraith." she panted.

"Do you know where he went?" Chaos asked.

"Sorry, but he disappeared so suddenly, I don't think I could have traced his teleportation path." Night Mare Moon replied.

"Get Discord and Chrysalis." Chaos ordered. "I think I'm going to have to talk with some of my older lieutenants who I haven't summoned in centuries." Turning around to face the band of ponies, he said "I know that we're enemies, but just don't get in my way. We're looking for the same pony." And with that, he left the room.

After the ponies were sure that Chaos was out of hearing range, Twilight asked "So Vulkus, what is it about Fluttershy's sword that let Fluttershy predict that Chaos was going to attack me?"

"I used magic to enchant each sword." Vulkus replied. "You see, each has a power that's transfered to the sword's true owner, and Fluttershy's sword is what I designed to save ponies as much as it can take their life. Fluttershy's has a power to see the future to help save ponies that may have died for some reason and change the future."

"Kind of like my Pinkie sense!" Pinkie exclaimed.

"Yes, exactly." Vulkus responded. "But to a more major degree. I would explain further, but I have a feeling we may need to get going. I thought I recognized something that Death had, and it may not be in our best interests to let Chaos get to him before we do. I'll explain later."

For the first time centuries, Chaos had called a full meeting. His army was vast and not much of it was deployed anymore ever since necromancy had been discovered. These days he only consulted with Night Mare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis, and Death. But now that Death was on the loose, it was an emergency.

The meeting included some monsters he hadn't seen in forever. The Paraspite (a species of Parasprite that feeds on the life force of ponies) commander, Spite, always left an impression on anybody he met. His tall bipedal form and insect wings were menacing to say the least, but the thing that left the biggest impression on ponies he met was his glowing red eyes.

Sitting next to Spite was a giant monkey-looking monster. It was Hung, the leader of the Drohen, a race of giant bipedal creatures. However, what set them apart from other monsters in the army was their ridiculously large feet. That trait however made them largely unpopular the army.

There were many others, but it simply would take too long to go over them in detail. But when the last one entered the room, the meeting began.

"Now, as you all know, we have a problem." Chaos began. "Death, one of my top commanders, has switched sides and escaped."

"So you mean that Death has switched sides to the ponies!" General Scales, the leader of the Hydras (not the giant 4-headed one from Feeling Pinkie Keen, but simply just a race of bipedal snakes that sometimes have special traits, such as nine heads) hissed.

"No." Chaos replied. "He has instead escaped to who knows where and not only that, he seems to be searching for something. This can prove to be dangerous, so I want him eliminated as soon as possible."

When Chaos got that direct, it was important to not to ask questions, and so the monsters in the room quickly and quietly left to do what Chaos said to do.

"Oh, I forgot to mention something." Chaos said after they all left. "If you meet Death, you will die." Chuckling, he left the room.

* * *

Vulkus had filled everypony in on all the details of his creations.

"As you know, I created many magical objects." he said.

"The Six Swords and the Elements of Harmony." Twilight answered.

"Yes, but I don't want to focus on those." Vulkus replied. "What I want to focus on are something I created long ago, for the emperors and chiefs and kings of the land that was once the Light Realm. The Divine Instruments. There are eight of them, with four of them being matching counterparts with the others, only with dark magic. After the founding of Equestria, though, there was little warfare, many things about the ancient times were lost to the sea of time, including the Divine Instruments. However, after I saw Death, I knew something was wrong."

"What do you mean?" Ace asked.

"Death wields the Scythes of Darkness; one of the Divine Instruments." Vulkus explained. "And if his Scythes of Darkness are reunited with the Scythes of Divine Light, then we're either one step closer to victory against evil, or the world is doomed."

"So you're saying that if these Divine Instruments are reunited, then there's a chance that we'll all be killed, and a chance that we'll all be saved?" Applejack wondered.

"Yes, that's what I mean." Vulkus responded. "It all depends on who unites them, and if Death unites them, we still don't know who he's working for. He could be on our side, he might be on Chaos' side, he might even be a free agent, working on his own. He's a wild card, and that's why we can't risk him uniting the scythes."

"But how will we even know that the other Divine Instruments are even in someponys possession?" Eagle Strike asked.

"I know where the Divine Instruments went." Vulkus answered. "The dark magic ones were lost, but I found the light ones and gave them to a noble family descended from one of my closest friends, Zephyr. That family would pass the Divine Instruments down the line, giving one to each of their offspring, though more than one have been given to a single colt or filly before. I would think that being one of the few families in Equestria that are a direct descendant of an ancient, they would take care to keep each Divine Instrument close and never keep them out of sight. So since Death has the Scythe of Darkness, and its counterpart is actually quite easy to find, it would be easy for Death to be able to track it down and then who knows what'll happen."

"But we don't even have a lead on who is a direct descendant of Zephyr!" Twilight said.

"We don't, but Death does." Vulkus said. Before anypony could ask, he said "The Divine Instruments are all magic, so a magic eater could easily find it by identifying every large cluster of magic in Equestria, and one of them would bound to be the location of the Divine Instruments."

"So that's why Death brought Wraith with him." Ace said, finally figuring out the answer to one of the most puzzling mysteries since they had first met the mane six in the Labyrinth. When she thought about that, she realized that it hadn't been that long since they had first met, yet they had created a bond of trust in the few days they had spent since first meeting.

"Anyways, we don't have a lead, but Death has a way to find the Divine Instruments. We can't just stay here. We need to find the Divine Instruments before he does. So I strongly suggest we get moving now and figure out a way to find the Divine Instruments." a voice rang out. It was Spirit.

"That is true." Vulkus agreed. "We mustn't give Death even more time to find the Divine Instruments. We need to find the Divine Instruments before he does. Oh, and Spirit, I do know of a way to find the Divine Instruments. Let me explain. . ."

* * *

A black stallion stood on a rock pile, surveying the land below him. Being an alicorn, it was hard for him to be able to move around in public, as alicorns are generally concieved to be extinct with the exception of Celestia and Luna. However, it seemed to him that alicorns seemed to be slowly reintroduced to the world, as he now saw alicorns mixing in with the pegasi as they flew across the skies.

The stallions name was Storm. He and his siblings had been traveling around Equestria, but he had had many disturbing dreams recently. Dreams about a black and white alicorn, an animated skeleton of a pony; visions of a red sky and a towering castle and many innocent looking ponies fleeing in fright as dragons swooped in and abducted them straight off of the ground.

He knew his siblings had been having bad dreams like this too, but none of them dared consult with one another about the dreams, fearing for what would be revealed if they did.

Walking back into a cave he and his siblings had stumbled upon during their travels, he was relieved to still see the four objects that had been passed down his family for many centuries. Each of his siblings had a certain right over one of them, given to them upon birth. He owned the Scythe of Divine Light, a large scythe said to be able to banish evil. His unicorn sister, Vanish, owned the Book of Storms, a book full of powerful and dangerous magic spells, many of them associated with the winds and the elements of nature. His earth pony brother, Quake, had inherited the Steel Gauntlets. The Steel Gauntlets are strong and sturdy gauntlets that are attached to the hooves. They can survive the most brutal of attacks and still protect the wearer. His pegasus sister, Strike, wielded arguably the most dangerous of all the objects in the cave at that moment: the Dual Blades of the Elements. They could burst into any element of nature, and are very hard to control. Luckily, Strike managed to control the blades and wielded them with deadly accuracy.

Normally at this time, the four of them would go out and perhaps get some food, and go to sleep, but Storm finally decided to talk about their dreams.

Clearing his throat, he said "I know we all have been having these dreams."

The siblings looked at eachother, knowing what Storm was talking about.

"I believe the ponies we saw and the vision we had in our dreams will come true soon." he continued. "And I think we need to warn somepony."

"But how?" Quake asked, but was interrupted by Strike.

"I've heard rumors that there's been a lot of strange things happening, and some ponies seem to always be involved." she said. "Maybe we can tell them about it."

"How will we know whether they're friend or foe, or whether they'll believe us at all?" Vanish asked.

"I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that somehow we need to stop this." Storm said. "The land in our visions is surely Equestria, and there's no way anypony's going to let that happen to Equestria."

"But still, what we see usually comes true." Vanish commented. "How are we going to change what we saw in our vision?"

"I don't know." Storm said. "But I do know something."

"What?" the siblings asked.

"We have to do something."

* * *

Chaos' army had been sent to find Death. Chaos was determined to do something else.

After using a portal to go to where the band of ponies were walking, he had prepared a special treat for them using magic and human technology, just like what Eagle Strike had done in the Labyrinth. The memory still burned him up when he thought about it.

Preparing to fire one shot, he touched his horn onto the human cannon and began to cast the spell.

After discussing the plan, the band of ponies had left the ruins to find Zephyr. Being an ancient, Zephyr's immortal, and that's what Vulkus was counting on when he formulated the plan. Knowing where Zephyr would stay if the ancients ever needed to lock themselves away until the time of the prophecies, Vulkus lead the band of ponies out of the ruins and began to lead them to Zephyr's hiding place, but out of nowhere, a giant ball of dark fire blasted at the ground in front of Vulkus, leaving a giant crater in the ground, with nothing to prove anything had ever been there.

As everypony else caught up to the shocked Vulkus, they saw Chaos emerge from the shadows while pulling a large iron object.

"That first shot was just a warning." Chaos said. "If any of you take a step closer, I'll use this cannon."

"What do you want, Chaos?" Spirit growled.

"To stay out of this Death business." Chaos replied. "This is between Death and I, and I don't want you to ruin my plans for vengaence against Death for betraying me!"

At least he doesn't seem to know about the Divine Instruments. Spirit thought with relief.

"How are you going to make us stay out this whole Death business?" Snake said, narrowing his eyes, knowing that Chaos would have something other than just a cannon to keep them away from Death.

"I think you'll see right about now." Chaos replied.

Spinning around, the ponies managed to see just in time to see Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie caught in the grips of Night Mare Moon, Chrysalis, and Discord.

Rainbow Dash immeadiatly flew up to them and said "You better release my friends right now!"

"Oh, Rainbow Dash, I think you know better than that." Discord said. "Do you honestly believe that we'd let them go now?" Rainbow Dash couldn't come up with a comeback for that.

"Take them away." Chaos said, watching as the ponies powerlessly watched Discord, Night Mare Moon, and Chrysalis disappear with their three captive ponies.

"Now, to explain what just happened, I'll just say that if you don't stay away from Death and I, your friends will die." Chaos explained calmly, enjoying every angry look etched on the faces of everypony that was there.

"Since you're done with your whole thing about kidnapping those ponies and threatening that you'll kill them, can you let us by?" Ace asked.

"I said that that was my insurance that you'll stay out of the business regarding Death was the kidnapping and the threatening, but I never did say I'd let all of you out of here alive." Chaos said, pointing the cannon at Spirit and Vulkus. "Everypony but you two, I recommend you get out. It's not worth taking more lives than necessary." However, those words proved meaningless because he fired the cannon immediately after finishing talking. The magic ball hurtling towards them at lightning speed, they acknowledged that they were about to die. But just as the magic blast was about to hit them, a sphere of light appeared. The sphere of light and the magic blast slammed into eachother, and everypony could only watch to see what was going to happen. . .

**TO BE CONTINUED**

**A/N: I'll be releasing the second part of this soon, perhaps even maybe later today, so you can look forward to that.**


	10. Awakening of the Ancients, Part 2

**Same notes as the previous chapter, so all I really need to say is that I'm looking for more human OCs, but ponies can still be submitted. Also, apparently I'm different than the regular brony crowd. Why? I like MLP G3 (but I hate 3.5 AKA Newborn Cuties). And I know why: Friendship is Magic focuses more on friendship and characters, which is good, and I enjoy watching it, but G3 has none of those things. Instead, it tries to show ponies having fun, which is something I just noticed that Friendship is Magic doesn't have very often. Because the episodes focus on learning a lesson, episodes that are actually just fun and games are quite rare; it's always just ponies going through trials and tribulations, and the occasional adventure story.**

**Chapter 9: Awakening of the Ancients: Part 2**

"What is this?" Chaos yelled as the sphere of light collided with his ball of dark magic. Immediatly, the sphere reformed into the image of a snarling tiger, and it batted the dark magic away.

"I didn't expect it to be that easy." somepony said behind the band of ponies. Upon closer inspection, anypony could tell it was a stallion and a pegasus. He had a light yellow-brownish coat and a brown mane.

"Hunter!" Chaos said, recognizing the stallion.

"Rather unfitting name, but yes, it's me." the stallion said. "I had sensed Nemesis' revival, and so I woke up from my sleep just to keep an eye on you and Demon."

"Well, now that I see that I'm completely outnumbered here, I believe I should leave." Chaos said. "But I should remind you to stay away from Death, or else your little pony friends are done for." And before anypony could do anything, he simply vanished.

"What was that all about?" Hunter inquired. "And what pony friends?"

"He captured Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie." Twilight said.

Hunter looked blankly at Spirit.

"They represent the Elements of Honesty, Generousity, and Laughter, respectively." she answered.

Hunter continued to look confused.

"They're part of the ponies of prophecy." Spirit said.

"Oh, so that's why it's so important." Hunter said.

"Anyways, Chaos has threatened us to stay away from Death, but he never mentioned the Divine Instruments." Vulkus noted.

"So that means. . ." Twilight began.

"We can still look for the Divine Instruments!" Rainbow Dash finished.

"Wait, what?" Hunter asked, confused once more.

Ignoring him, Spirit said "Well then, let's go look for Zephyr."

"Oh, are you looking for Zephyr?" Hunter asked. "I know where he is. I met him a couple times; his resting place deep inside a mountain."

"A mountain? Why would he hide there?" Rainbow Dash asked. "I mean, he's supposed to be the god of the winds, isn't he? Why would he hide somewhere that's the complete opposite of where he controlled?"

"So that he won't be found." Vulkus answered. "Nopony would look for him deep in a mountain. In fact, it'd be the last place anypony would look for him!"

"Still, we don't know which mountain he's at." Twilight said.

"The tallest mountain in the mountain range to the north of Canterlot." Hunter replied. "It's mostly made of rocks, and it's in the same mountain range as the one where the dragon lived; I believe you've met him before."

"I remember him." Rainbow Dash said.

"Well anyways, why don't you lead us there?" Vulkus asked.

"From where we are right now, we'd need a portal to get there." Hunter replied.

"Judging by the research the Sol has done, I don't think that they're any portals nearby that could take us to mountains." Eagle Strike said. "We'll have to travel there by hoof."

"I don't think that we're going to need to do that." Spirit said.

"Why?" Hunter asked.

"As you should remember, portals were one of the fastest ways to travel back then." Spirit replied. "And there're a couple spells used to create and manipulate portals."

"You're not saying -"

"Yes. I'm saying that I can create portals to take us to the mountains. However, it's going to take some energy, and I need you all to back away." Once everypony had done what she said, she began to cast the spell.

* * *

"What happened?" Applejack asked when her eyes opened. Seeing Pinkie and Rarity on her floor caused her to remember that the three of them had been kidnapped by Chaos, and knocked out. But then what?

She shook Pinkie and Rarity, and the two of them woke up.

"What?" Rarity said, but she suddenly became much more alert when she saw the bruises and dirt on her coat. "Why, this is an outrage!" she exclaimed. "Look at what happened to by coat! Who did this? I'll get them for this crime against fashion! I just got a pony pedi!" She continued to rage on about how she looked.

"Why, why, my little ponies, you're finally awake." Discord appeared out of nowhere. "You really are an entertaining bunch."

"Why don't you go away, Discord?" Applejack said.

"Oh, but isn't this the part in most dramas where the villain reveals his secret plot to his captives, but then the captives escape and tell the heroes of the story, who stop the villain from completing his or her evil plot and usually save the world?" Discord asked. "Wait, then this isn't exactly a good idea to do this, but who cares. Anyways, Chaos is planning to capture your friends, the ancients, the Six Swords, the Elements of Harmony, and the Divine Instruments all at once. Yes, we know about the Divine Instruments; us pretending we have no idea about the Divine Instruments was all a lie, and a paper-thin lie at that, but I digress. Currently, you three and another prisoner we have are being used as bait. Then, once we have all of you, then chaos will reign, as there is nopony to stop us!"

"Well, how do they even know that we're even here?" Applejack asked.

"I hung a giant neon sign on this prison facility." Discord replied.

"Seriously?"

"No." Discord said. "I actually have something more. . . sinister planned." Then, without elaborating, he teleported off.

"Why do I have the feeling that they're going to succeed?" Applejack wondered aloud.

* * *

At the foot of the mountain where Zephyr rested, Twilight could see it was a huge mountain.

"Zephyr gets in and out of the mountain through a hidden tunnel in the caves of the mountain." Hunter said. "It's somewhere near the middle of the mountain."

It was a grueling climb up, but they finally saw a cave.

"Is that the cave you're talking about?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"It's the one." Hunter replied. "So, we just need to get in the caves and we should be able to find Zephyr." Upon entering the cave, it was apparent that is was inhabited. A small fire burned in the center of the cave, and some leaves were arranged as makeshift beds, as if it were only a temporary home.

"Well why don't we get looking?" Vulkus asked, getting straight to the business at hand. The ponies began to search all around.

"If I were a secret tunnel, where would I be?" Rainbow Dash muttered as she poked around the area near the far edge of the cave. She noticed some small holes arranged on the wall, and she was about to call the rest of the ponies over when somepony appeared at the door.

"What are you all doing here?"

A black stallion stood at the entrance to the cave with an expression somewhere between confusion and anger.

"Oh, we're just looking for a secret tunnel in this cave to reach into the very depths of the mountain to find an ancient." Vulkus said.

"An ancient?" the stallion asked. "You mean the ancient pony deities?"

"You know about that?" Spirit said, surprised.

"I've had dreams and a pegasus has been visiting me in my dreams." the stallion replied. "He said that the ancients needed to be reunited, and predicted the fall of Equestria and the cleansing of the world."

"Seems just like Zephyr." Vulkus muttered. "Always being prepared for the worst, and believing in the prophecies, even the ones that aren't going to happen until eons have pasted."

"Well anyways, I believe him about the destruction of Equestria; I had a vision in my dreams of a land plagued by dragons, ponies being captured, and a towering black castle." the stallion continued. "He also told me that some ponies will come here and talk about the ancients, and he told me to show you something." Walking out, he called "Quake, Strike, Vanish, get over here!"

Three more ponies, one unicorn, one earth pony, and one pegasus, entered.

"Okay, what is going on?" Rainbow Dash asked, looking confused, but Vulkus seemed to be heavily shocked by these four ponies.

"Where did you get those?" he asked the pegasus, who had two swords with her.

"I inherited them." she replied. "Storm got a scythe, Vanish got a book, and Quake got some gauntlets."

"So this is why Zephyr's visited them." Vulkus murmured before saying "I'd like to see fire." to the pegasus.

"What?" Twilight asked, not understanding what Vulkus was asking.

Suddenly, the two swords burst into flame, surprising the pegasus.

"How did you manage to do that?" the pegasus asked. "Only I can do that."

"The truth of the matter is that I can control all four of the things that you inherited." Vulkus stated. "After all, I created them." This brought shocked looks to everyone of the ponies faces.

"How is that possible?" the alicorn, Storm, asked. "These have been passed down the family for generations."

"Because I'm from that time." Vulkus replied.

"So you're from the past?" the pegasus said.

"You could say that." Vulkus answered. "I'm actually a deity, and I created those objects you have there. Allow me to prove it to you." He stomped his hoof, and the weapons began to glow and vibrate until they were completely engulfed in light. Finally, each began to rise into the air. However, the magic used to perform that seemed to adruptly run out and the instruments dropped onto the ground.

"How is that even possible?" the unicorn asked. "You're an earth pony; earth ponies can't use magic."

"We live in a world where friendship is magic, and so magic is everywhere." Vulkus replied. "It's the same reason for why you can summon the elements of the earth to power your swords, Strike."

The last word caused the pegasus to step back in shock. "How do you know my name?" she said. "I never told you." No answer.

"Anyways, we're looking for an entrance to the center of the cave. Rainbow Dash knows where it is." Vulkus said.

"What? How should I know where to find an entrance?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Close your eyes and clear your mind." Vulkus replied.

Rainbow Dash did those things, and suddenly found her body moving. She moved to one side of the cave, the side where the saw those strange holes, and pressed her hoof against the wall. The holes on the wall suddenly began to glow green, and gusts of wind seemed to blow from them.

"What's happening?" the alicorn yelled over the roaring wind.

Finally, the cave wall had taken enough pressure, and collapsed, revealing a tunnel.

"Told you." Vulkus said.

Walking down the tunnel, the air became more and more moist as they traveled deeper into the mountain. Finally, they began to feel the wind blowing, softly at first, but growing into a roaring storm.

"We should be getting close." Spirit said. "I can feel a lot of power, and nearby."

After turning a corner, the band of ponies was completely blown away (literally) by the area they had just entered. Powerful winds blew in circles around the ponies and they were blown backwards.

"What is this?" Storm yelled.

"I'm not sure!" Eagle Strike yelled back. "I can't think straight! The wind's too loud!"

Almost immediatly, the wind died down, revealing a pegasus with a light green coat.

"Oh sorry." the pegasus said absentmindly. "I didn't think there'd be visitors. There haven't been any visitors here for the past thousand years."

"Zephyr," Vulkus said.

"To business, as always." the pegasus, Zephyr, muttered. "Since we're talking about business, you should already know about the whole Chaos problem, right?"

"Yes." Twilight replied.

"Well, since he captured three of you, I suspect you want to save them, don't you?" Zephyr said. "Well don't."

"What do you mean?" Rainbow Dash yelled. "Our friends are trapped in who knows where with who knows what happening to them, and you expect us NOT to save them?"

"Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty; it's a good trait, but dangerous." Zephyr said. "Haven't you learned that Chaos is clever? His roots as one of the former gods of balance made him clever. He's going to use your good traits against you. It's suicide to try to rescue your friends now."

"What do you mean?" Rainbow Dash asked. "We have three deities on our side, four counting you."

"Knowledge is power." Zephyr replied. "You may have superior power, but knowledge can make a big difference. Do you remember the story of Spirit, Chaos, and Nemesis? Nemesis by far had superior power, but who won? Spirit and Chaos did. Why? Because they had more knowledge on their side; they knew that Nemesis couldn't be hurt by any weapon or spell, so they created a new type of both, which had the power to kill him. I doubt Chaos left your three friends armed, and so we can assume that he has three of the six swords. If all six sword were to fall into his hooves. . ."

"Okay, I think we get it." Storm Edge said. "You're telling us that we can't let this or that happen, but you never gave us any reason to why we would lose the fight."

"Overconfidence causes blindness, and with blindness comes mistakes." Zephyr said. "You make one mistake; you're doomed."

"He has a point." Ace pointed out. "If we are caught, then what happens? Chaos would have the power of the six swords, and who knows what could happen if that happened? The end of the world, perhaps?"

"I'm with Ace on this one." Snake said. "Even though we have more firepower, I doubt Chaos won't be expecting us. We'd be playing right into his hooves."

"There's one way we can settle this." Eagle Strike. "We vote."

* * *

Chaos sat in his throne room, thinking about his next move.

At this point, they're probably getting Zephyr. he thought. So Zephyr may convince them not to try to free their friends. So that means I'm just going to have to put a little icing on the cake.

"Discord!" he called, summoning the draconequess.

"Yes?" Discord asked.

"Do you mind if you go search for the last two deities?" Chaos asked. "I would go after them myself, but I have something else to attend to. You shouldn't have a problem against those two, but take this, just in case." A spark of dark magic flew from Chaos and into Discord, and Discord could feel his power grow.

"I'll deal with those two." he said. He then teleported off.

"Now for the others." Chaos said before teleporting off himself.

* * *

Shining Armor heard somepony knock on the door. Rushing over, he opened the door. To his surprise, a black alicorn was standing at the door.

An alicorn? he thought. This must be something important. Alicorns rarely exist outside of the line of princesses; they used to be all over the land, but after the war. . .

"What are you doing here?" Shining Armor asked. "Is there anything -" He suddenly felt a sharp pain on the top of his head, and saw that the alicorn had drawn its sword and slammed its hilt into his head. Just after realizing that, Shining Armor felt his conciousness slipping away and he blacked out.

* * *

Chaos stood over the white unicorn. It had been easy enough to knock him out. Now it was time to deal with the other one. Walking into the kitchen of the house, he approached the pink alicorn. Slowly, he raised his sword. He was about to let it crash down onto the alicorn's head when it suddenly turned around and blocked it with her horn.

"How did I not sense you before?" she asked. "You have so much magic, it doesn't even compare to Celestia. Who are you, and why are you trying to kill me?"

"Well, it seems that you're a little sharper than your husband." Chaos replied. "He didn't even stand a chance. Strange. He's the captain of the Royal Guard, but I'm having a harder time against you."

"Shining Armor? What did you do to him?" the alicorn asked.

"Oh nothing." Chaos replied. "He's just enjoying a nap. You know what I mean." This seemed to enrage the alicorn further, and she pushed harder against his sword with surprising strength, forcing him to take a step back. "I have a feeling I'm going to regret this soon." he muttered as he suddenly released his sword, caught it in mid-air, and sliced upwards with it, cutting the tip of the alicorn's horn off. That caused the alicorn to stumble backwards and crash into the cabinets.

"Night night." he said, and he slammed the hilt of his sword into the alicorn's head, knocking her out.

* * *

The band of ponies had just suggested the idea of voting, when they recieved a magic message.

"I wonder what this could be." Twilight said as the message began to play out. To her horror, she saw Chaos' image flicker in the air and he began talking.

"First off, I would like to start off with something." he said. "You are screwed if you don't come. I have ponies important to you. Ponies you wouldn't dare sacrifice. That's the problem with having friends: there's always ponies to threaten." The image changed and showed a series of large prison cells. Some of them were empty, some had inhabitants. She saw Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie; she expected them to be there, but what really caused her to gasp was that she saw Shining Armor and Cadence lying on the floor of another cell. In two other cells, an unicorn and an earth pony were lying on the floor, beaten and bruised.

The ponies watching were quick to point out several things.

"Did he actually capture them." Vulkus gasped.

"Who?" Twilight asked.

"The last two ancients. They're over there." Vulkus replied, pointing at the earth pony and unicorn.

Spirit, still noticing those two, also noticed something else. "Is that alicorn's horn chipped?" she said, pointing at Cadence.

Twilight, looking closer at Cadence, did notice that her horn was chipped. A broken unicorn horn wouldn't function correctly and often fail to cast spells, and if they managed to catch a spell, they were often unstable and very dangerous.

"As you can see, I have what you want." Chaos continued. "And I plan to get rid of it. Your friends will suffer the worst pain I can find from the spells I know. In fact, I'll be able to use one of my favorites. Hope you enjoy seeing your friends torn to pieces. I'll send you a video when it happens." There was no humor in the last two sentences at all. The message then ended.

"He's not actually going to rip them to pieces, right?" Storm asked.

"Since it's Chaos, I would say to not underestimate him." Spirit replied. "If he wants to, yes he can probably find a slow and painful way to rip them into pieces. Maybe if he cut them open, slice of their flank, extracted all their organs in front of them while making really bad organ jokes while still keeping them alive, and then finally stuffing them so that he can make a new 'friend'."

"Why did you have to go into so much detail?" Hunter asked, extremely agitated because he had tried to imagine that actually happening. It wasn't pretty.

"Well, I could have gone into more detail, if you want me to, but -"

"Sorry to interrupt, but in case you didn't notice, we need to move." Zephyr said.

"What?" everypony said, surprised that Zephyr was the one trying to get a move on.

"The stakes are higher." Zephyr replied. "We can't let them die. Trap or not, I'm going. Anypony with me?" Slowly, everypony raised their hoof, signaling that they agreed.

"Well then, if we're going to go, what are we standing here for?" Hunter said. "Let's go."

* * *

Chaos' prison was a massive building built on the side of a cliff, an extremely difficult to get to place. However, with the help of some magic, the band of ponies was able to teleport straight to the prison.

"I don't like the feel of this place." Fluttershy whispered. "It's so dark and scary."

"I'm not scared." Rainbow Dash said.

"Well no surprise there." Strife muttered.

Entering the prison, it was clear that the simple outside was just an illusion. Inside the prison, guards carefully traveled down the hall, and invisible magic shields were placed nearly everywhere.

"What do we do now?" Hunter whispered. "The guards are everywhere."

"I'll take them out." Forgotten Flash said and then began to carefully sneak towards the guards. Whenever the guards turned around to look at him, he seemed to just vanish into thin air, and then reappear whenever the guards turned their back. Finally he was close enough to two guards patrolling the same hallway to touch them. He suddenly reapperaed, grabbed both of them by the neck and slammed their heads together, knocking them out. Signalling for them to follow him, he walked down the hallway.

A door labeled "Prison Rooms" was on the right end of the hallway and Forgotten Flash reached out to open it. Suddenly, Zephyr realized what it was and yelled out "Don't!", but it was too late. The door turned, and suddenly, several monsters, led by a giant wasp-looking monster appeared.

"Looks like we've been caught in a trap." Strife said, pointing out the obvious.

"Of course you're caught." the wasp monster hissed. "Now to destroy you. . ."

"I don't think so." Strife said. Signalling for the others to run, he summoned thousands upon thousands of swords, spears, axes, and other weapons.

"What is this?" the wasp monster said. "Somepony who knows telummuncy? What is this?"

"What it is" Strife said. "Is that you all are going to die." The weapons suddenly turned to face the monsters, and suddenly burst forwards, impaling the monsters, killing them. Thousands of weapons flew in the air as even the weapons the monsters were carrying began to turn on their masters.

However, more monsters began to arrive, and they died, too. However, the magic was weakening. Strife knew he couldn't keep this up much longer.

A giant troll burst through the lines of monsters, and Strife turned his focus to it. Summoning even more weapons, he aimed them at the troll. Just as he was about to fire, all the weapons suddenly dropped to the floor and Strife began to cough blood. He had used to much magic. The troll was about to crush Strife, when two ponies suddenly appeared and attacked the troll. On closer inspection, Strife could make out that one of the ponies was Rainbow Dash. The other was Zephyr.

Rainbow Dash, using her electrified sword, flew around the troll, stabbing its eyes and slashing at its skin. While this was happening, Zephyr was attacking as well, attacking in time with Rainbow Dash, distracting the troll while Rainbow Dash flew to attack the troll again, and vice versa. Finally, the troll fell and the army of monsters, surprised that their leader had been defeated, ran away.

The two pegasi approached him and helped him up.

"Why are you here?" Strife asked.

"I snuck away from the group because I didn't know if you could take out all of the monsters." Rainbow Dash replied. "Zephyr came with me."

"Oh." Strife said.

"I think we should catch up with the rest of the group." Rainbow Dash said. "They shouldn't be that far away."

Suddenly, a new voice was heard. "I don't think so."

Turning around, the ponies saw Night Mare Moon, sword drawn, and ready to attack. Turning back around, they saw that the exits to the room had all been blocked.

"That's right." Night Mare Moon said. "You're in here with me. Get used to it." Without warning, she leaped at Strife, who was just recovering, and raised her sword.

* * *

Spirit knew that Rainbow Dash and Zephyr had left. She didn't do anything to stop it. She knew it was for the better.

"I think this is it." Vulkus said, pointing at a door. Sure enough, when the ponies looked through the keyhole to see what was on the other side, they saw the captured ponies.

Putting her horn through the keyhole, Spirit used magic to break the lock, and the door slowly opened. Nothing moved. The ponies on the other side, Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie, looked shocked to see them, but remained quiet, knowing even the smallest sound could give them away.

Suddenly, the ponies heard a voice behind them.

"My my. All of you at one place. I suppose this makes my job much easier."

It was the voice of Discord.

* * *

**Anyways, OC submissions are still open. This is it for now. Arceus100, signing off.**


	11. New Friends

**This note originally said that you could still submit OCs, but that I have the whole story sort-of planned out already, and so any OCs from this point onwards may or may not have a 100% chance of making it in, but with the most recent OCs I've gotten, I just want to get something out of the way: From now on please submit only NORMAL OCs.**

**As a side note, I will have romance in the story.**

**Also, as for even more credits, the pony Thunder Ice belongs to the author Thunder Ice. Also, I recommend his story, Human of a Pony. It's a great fic. In addition, the character Falchion belongs to Eddie201, formerly known as Fallout4Ever101.**

**These recent chapters have been pretty hard to write, which is why there're taking so long. However, soon I'll be able to write more comfortably. It's just going to take a little patience.**

**Even more information you might want to know is that I'll be out starting tommorrow and I'll be back by Wednesday, I think, so I might not update during that week, but I'll do my best to pre-write some chapters that I can post while I'm out. But enough with the notes, let's just get on with the story.**

**Chapter 10: New Friends**

"So, you found us." Spirit said. "But does it matter really?"

"What do you mean?" Discord asked. "Of course it matters! You're caught! You can't do anything at this point!"

"Oh really?" Spirit said. Suddenly, her hoof flew up and a cloak of stars appeared around her and Discord.

"What magic trick is this?" Discord said.

"I just trapped you and me together." Spirit replied. Then turning to the remaining ponies, she said "Go! Don't look for Zephyr or Rainbow Dash! Just get the other ponies trapped here and get out! I'll deal with Discord!"

Twilight, wondering what Spirit meant by not looking for Rainbow Dash and Zephyr, turned, and suddenly realized that Zephyr and Rainbow Dash had disappeared. However, trusting Spirit, she did what she was told and she and the rest of the group plus Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie quickly left.

"Do you really think this can contain me?" Discord asked after the ponies had left. "I could just snap my fingers and -"

"Try it." Spirit said. "Trust me; it won't work." Discord, wondering what she meant, snapped his fingers. However, nothing happened.

"What?" Discord said.

"You're trapped." Spirit replied. "Don't even try getting out. Now just sit here like a good draconequus and wait for Chaos to let you out. In the meantime, I think I'll go and catch up with everypony else." Stepping out of the forcefield the cloak had created, Spirit ran after the rest of the ponies.

* * *

Night Mare Moon, sword drawn, leaped at the defenseless Strife.

"I don't think so." Zephyr said, throwing his sword at Night Mare Moon. The sword he threw struck Night Mare Moon's sword and it shifted in position, causing Night Mare Moon's sword to pass right by Strife and sending her sprawling into Strife, knocking both of them into a wall.

"Stupid pony." Night Mare Moon muttered, getting up and raising her sword. However, her sword suddenly flew out of her hoof and the wall behind her.

"You're the stupid one if you thought it'd be that easy." Strife replied, summoning a sword and knocking Night Mare Moon off of him.

Zephyr immediatly leaped into action, tackling Night Mare Moon. "Find the others!" he yelled at the two remaining ponies. "Keep an eye out for Chaos' minions. He'll be sending them at you. Just go!" Strife and Rainbow Dash immediatly exited, allowing Zephyr and Night Mare Moon to continue their fight.

* * *

Using the fact that Discord had attacked them and the fact that they were in Chaos' prison, Twilight had deduced that Night Mare Moon and Chrysalis along with more of Chaos' minions would be guarding the rest of the place.

The band of ponies came to a door leading the the central corridor of prison cells.

"I don't think we should go there." Twilight said.

"Why not?" Hunter asked.

"Well, there aren't any guards here." Twilight replied. "It'd be stupid to leave the door to the central corridor of prison cells unguarded."

"That is true." Vulkus said. "But this is the only lead we have to where they're holding everypony else. What if this really is the actual door, but they're trying to make us think that it isn't so that we miss it?"

"Well, nopony can deny that as an option." Twilight said. "But what if Chaos predicted out doubt and -" She was interrupted by a sudden noise. Turning around, to her surprise, she saw Fluttershy and Chrysalis. Even more surprisingly, Fluttershy was not being pinned down or had a knife at her throat like what normally happened when the band was taken by surprise, but rather, she was doing pretty well against Chrysalis, dodging all of Chrysalis' attempts to attack her.

"How is she doing that?" Swift Steel breathed as she watched all of Chrysalis' blows miss.

Chrysalis seemed to be focusing on Fluttershy, but Twilight caught something in the corner of her eye that told her she was going to perform a feint to attack one of them, who were not expecting an attack. She was about to warn the others, when Chrysalis, who had purposefully missed Fluttershy with a swipe with her hooves, spun around lightning fast and was about to slam her hoof into Twilight's head when Fluttershy slammed into her, knocking her out of the way, but getting trapped under Chrysalis' hooves.

Fluttershy had no idea how she had done any of that. Some instinct just took over her and she somehow had dodged every one of Chrysalis' attacks an even managed to protect Twilight from a blow to the head. Unfortunately, that means that she was trapped under Chrysalis' hooves.

"Nice try pony." Chrysalis breathed. "But unfortunately, this is the end of the line for you!" Raising her hoof, Chrysalis was about to strike Fluttershy when Fluttershy suddenly rolled over, dodging Chrysalis' hoof, causing it to slam into the ground and make her cry out in pain. Taking advantage of the situation, the instinct that Fluttershy had felt earlier suddenly returned and she kicked Chrysalis' hooves, causing her to collapse.

"You've really done it this time." Chrysalis said, getting up. She was about to leap at Fluttershy when she suddenly fell over again. Looking to see what happened, they saw Snake had taken a wooden stick and banged Chrysalis' head with it.

"Snake?" Swift Steel asked. "Where'd you come from?"

"While you all were pondering over whether we should go through that door or not, I hid under that box to watch to see if any Chaos' minions would come through." Snake replied, referring to an abnormally large cardboard box sitting in the corner of the hall. "Then I sneaked up behind Chrysalis, waiting for the right moment to knock her out."

Suddenly, Spirit ran in. "Hello everypony." she said. "Did I miss anything?" There was an awkward silence. Thankfully, Rainbow Dash and Strife came in.

"Where's Zephyr?" Vulkus asked Rainbow Dash. "And on the same subject, Spirit, where's Discord?"

"Zephyr's fighting Night Mare Moon." Rainbow Dash replied. "He said he'd be fine."

"And I trapped Discord in my cloak of stars." Spirit said. "I don't think he'll be a problem."

"Alright then." Vulkus said. "Well, then, should we go in or should we not?"

"I'd say it's worth the risk." Spirit said. "We should be able to deal with whatever Chaos can throw at us." Walking through the door, no alarm seemed to have been triggered, lulling the ponies into a false sense of security.

* * *

Twilight silently approached Fluttershy as they walked down the hall.

"What was that thing you did earlier?" she asked.

"I don't know." Fluttershy replied. "Some instinct just took over me. It's strange. I wasn't even scared."

Twilight pondered over what Fluttershy had said. Vulkus mentioned that the swords powers had been partially transferred to the user. she thought. But none of us except for Fluttershy seem to be affected. What if he's lying about that?

Walking over to the Vulkus she said to him "Are you sure that the Six Swords powers are transferred to the user?"

"What do you mean?" Vulkus asked.

"You said that the Six Swords powers would be transferred to us." Twilight replied.

"That's correct." Vulkus said.

"I don't think you're telling the truth." Twilight stated.

"Well what do you mean when you say I'm not telling the truth?" Vulkus said. "Of course I'm telling the truth."

"Then explain to me why there haven't been any signs of it happening except with Fluttershy!" Twilight said. "And even she doesn't show all the signs that its happening to her either! She might have had her sword at the time, but all of us have had our swords with us and it's never happened in a time of need!"

Vulkus was silent. Finally, he said "Oh look, it's the first prison cell."

_Why is he avoiding this topic?_ Twilight thought. _Could he be hiding something?_

"This door's unguarded." Snake said. "The easiest way to go through it is probably get in and out as fast as possible. Somepony should stay behind and guard. Any volunteers?"

"I guess Shadowblaze and I can do it." Swift Steel said.

"Okay." Snake said. "Swift Steel, Shadowblaze, guard the door. Everypony else, we're going in."

Inside the room, they were suddenly assaulted by a massive wave of bipedal snakes.

"It was a trap!" Vulkus yelled as the bipedal snakes began to charge at them.

* * *

Outside, Shadowblaze heard the fight and was about to turn around to help when a metal gate suddenly appeared in front of the door, preventing anypony from entering. Turning around, again, he saw an army of giant moths charging at them.

Swift Steel immediatly drew his two swords and Shadowblaze drew a single black sword. Immediatly, they were attacked by countless moths, and it was all they could do to not be pushed back by the waves upon waves of moths.

"You ponies truly are annoying." a large moth-bipedal creature hybrid said. "But nonetheless, you have yet to see the bulk of my army. Prepare to die."

Suddenly a voice rang out. "Not if I have anything to say about it." An armored unicorn, wielding two spears, charged at the moths. Taken by surprise, countless moths fell, but more just took their place.

"Who are you?" Shadowblaze asked.

"That doesn't matter now." the armored pony replied. "Let's just finish these monsters off." Once again, charging into battle, the three ponies continued to slay the moths. However, something caught Swift Steel's eye. It was the way the armored pony fought. It looked. . . familiar. Thinking deeply into it, Swift Steel suddenly realized who the armored pony was.

"Falchion!" he exclaimed.

The armored pony turned to look at him. "It's been a while." he said. "But this is no time for chatter. We'll discuss this later."

Eventually, after fighting off at least three hundred moths, the moth leader yelled "Retreat!" The moths turned around and flew away. The moth leader than said to the three ponies "We let you live this time. The next time you won't be so lucky!" Swift Steel believed him. Despite his training, he was exhausted and knew that he wouldn't be able to last through much more fighting.

Shadowblaze walked up to the armored pony. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Falchion." Swift Steel quickly said.

"Who?" Shadowblaze said.

"Well, it certainly has been a while, Swift Steel." the armored pony, Falchion, said.

"Why are you here?" Swift Steel asked.

"The captain of the royal guard, Shining Armor, and his wife suddenly disappeared right out of his home one day." Falchion replied. "Princess Celestia thinks that this abandoned tower has something to do with this. Seems like the place isn't so unpopulated like we thought."

"Yes, this is a prison, and some of the ponies traveling with us are trapped behind this door." Shadowblaze said.

Swift Steel and Falchion looked at the metal grate. Touching it caused an electric shock to run through them.

"It's magic." Falchion stated. "And strong magic too. I don't think an army of guards could break through it."

"Well then what do we do?" Swift Steel asked.

"I guess we'll just have to find another way in." Falchion said, picking up his spears and looking at the wall next to the door.

* * *

Meanwhile, the remaining ponies were cornered by an entire army of bipedal snakes.

"Who are you?" Spirit demanded.

"We are the Hydras." a large nine-headed snake with no legs, presumably their leader, hissed. "And we're here to destroy you!" Without warning, the hydras charged.

Snake was the first to react to the sudden attack, dodging the charge by dropping down and rolling before drawing his sword and slashing at the nearest hydra. Immediately after that, everypony else began to fight against the hydras.

Hunter quickly leaped up to a high ledge, where only the largest of hydras could reach, and began picking off the hydras from above using a crossbow that he somehow had obtained. While he was doing that, Raymond grabbed a sword and began to slash the hydras with it, taking many of them out. The mane six, although armed, had no idea how to use their weapons, and didn't exactly succeed in doing anything, with the exception of Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, who were taking out many hydras, Rainbow Dash doing it by flying around while stabbing them, and Fluttershy doing it because of that strange instinct again.

Despite the hydras overwhelming numbers, the ponies were slowly forcing them back. But then, reinforcements came. Suddenly, an army of moths burst in through the ceiling and toppled Hunter over. The tides had turned, and now the ponies were now being forced back. Despite the ponies best efforts, they were backed into a corner and were about to be killed when one pony got out their secret weapon.

"We're not done yet." Eagle Strike said, pulling out a circular object. He threw it onto the ground and it created a giant shockwave, blasting everything in sight away, friend or foe, sending the hydras and moths out into the sky and the ponies against the wall.

* * *

Zephyr had just caught up with Swift Steel, Shadowblaze, and an armored pony who Swift Steel said was named Falchion when he first felt a tremor. Turning around towards the wall, he saw it shaking and he was about to warn the others when it suddenly was blasted outwards and a massive shockwave spread out from it, slamming the ponies into the wall.

"What in Celestia's name?" Swift Steel said.

Quickly recovering from the shockwave, the ponies went through the massive hole in the wall and discovered the rest of the group, also recovering from the shockwave. When they recovered, Hunter noticed the armored pony.

"Who's he?" he asked.

"My name's Falchion, and I'm the lieutenant of the royal guard." Falchion said. "I was sent here to see if Celestia's belief that this tower has something to do with the disappearence of the captain of the royal guard Shining Armor. But anyways, what was that shockwave?"

"Something I got from Earth." Eagle Strike replied.

"Earth?" Falchion asked. "What's Earth?"

"It's another world." Spirit said. "It's complicated. You'll learn about it soon enough."

The ponies then noticed another gaping hole in the other wall of the room and went through it. To there surprise, the previous hallway was just a fake; there was the real hallway of prisons beyond that wall.

"How are we supposed to know which doors are traps and which ones are real?" Shadowblaze asked. "Anyone of them could be fake or real."

"Well, I do know one spell." Twilight said. "It's said to comfort the bitterest of hearts and burn the hearts of those who are evil."

"You're referring to the Fire of Friendship, aren't you?" Spirit said. "And yes, I do believe it could work. Monsters will be unable to respond as it burns to much, and ponies trapped in here will know that there's somepony good in here. It's worth a shot."

"Wait; do you even know how to cast the spell?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Well, I have an idea how to." Twilight said. "If we just transfer the feelings of goodness, like the Elements, into the spell, it should be strong enough to produce the Fire of Friendship."

"Fitting." Vulkus commented. "That's what the Elements were supposed to be."

"What?" Twilight said.

"The Elements of Harmony are designed to be a transfer, to expose all of that goodness into an energy used to banish evil." Vulkus explained. "They may have power of their own, but it's the power of the bearer that truly does the work. The Elements only magnify the power of these emotions and transform them into power."

"Enough chit chat. Why don't we just get on with it?" Rainbow Dash asked.

With all of the ponies, ready, Twilight began the spell. Purple energy, the color of magic, began to swirl around the ponies and they all flew to one central point above Twilight, creating a burning heart. Suddenly, screams could be heard as the spell began to illuminate the corridor and several doors began to fade, leaving only three.

"That's strange." Spirit noted. "As far as we know, only the two remaining ancients plus Shining Armor and Cadence have been captured. Chaos doesn't capture ponies who could possibly defeat him this far into the prison. I would think only ponies related to the prophecies from ancient times would be put here."

"For the first time, I wish Zephyr were here." Hunter said. "He's memorized all of the prophecies, word for word."

Taking a closer look at the door, the ponies could clearly see that they were all completely covered in locks and chains, having a total of five locks on each door. In addition, it was apparent through the dim, but still visible, glow on the door that it was locked by magic and would be unable to break. In addition, as an extra security measure, Chaos seemed to have decorated the door with several runes.

"These runes are all very powerful binding runes." Spirit said. "There are several runes that would require a ton of magical ability to cast, and I'm surprised he manages to hold all of these runes in place for all this time. I would be surprised if I could even hold all these runes up for too long."

"Why does that matter?" Rainbow Dash asked. "It still doesn't change the fact that we can't get in."

"Well, I do know some spells that can unlock doors." Twilight said. "Maybe I unlock them."

"No; these doors are locked with a magic seal; magic cannot be used on this door." Spirit said. "Eagle Strike experimented with that spell a little during that incident in the labyrinth."

"How do you know about that?" Twilight asked. "You weren't even there."

Spirit didn't respond.

_Why are these ancients so secretive?_ Twilight wondered. _First Vulkus and now Spirit. They mentioned a prophecy; maybe this has something to do with that._

"So, if we can't use magic, and we can't knock the door over, what can we do?" Applejack asked.

"There is a way." Spirit said. "But it's risky. We must reverse the magical flow of the runes on these doors, thus causing them to break rather then to protect. However, in order to do this, we must locate the flow of magic and intercept it, then reverse its flow by generating more magic than the magic on these doors, thus reversing their uses and destroying the doors."

"How is that risky?" Rainbow Dash asked. "One of you ancients could do it!"

"Ancients aren't allowed to mess with the flow of magic." Spirit said. "It's the one flow that we can't interfere with. And I don't think that any one of you could do this. The magic is much too strong for one pony. Several of you must take the chance."

"Well, couldn't we just use the Elements again?" Twilight asked. "As you mentioned, they've stored the power of us within them, and so wouldn't they be able to use every ounce of magic they've stored against this?"

"Theoretically, you could." Spirit replied. "It's just that still, even with the Elements, it's not as strong as all these powerful runes. Also, draining all the magic from the Elements will leave you unable to use them until they're 'refilled' by you strongly feeling those emotions again, and though it'd be easy for Magic, it'd mean that it'd be difficult to ever be able to use the Elements again until after this is over. Anyways, even with the Elements, we'd still need more ponies."

"I'm surprised you haven't figured this out yet, Spirit." Vulkus commented. "We have two and a half sets of magical items here; the Elements, the Six Swords, and four Divine Instruments. Altogether, their strength is unimaginable."

"You're right." Spirit said. "But first let's see if they agree with the idea."

The mane six and the Storm siblings, after thinking it over for a bit, ultimately decided to go along with the plan.

After making the magic flow in the hallway visible, the ponies began. However, once they began, what they experienced was something they never could have imagined. Upon entering, the magic flow, they were immediately overwhelmed by the magic, but managed to remain still, slowly pushing back the magic flow.

This is stronger than I thought. Twilight thought, struggling to keep her hold on the ground, despite her having both the Element of Magic and Twilight Sword, arguably the two most powerful items anypony caught in the flow held. She could feel her hooves slipping back.

The ponies in the flow probably wouldn't have been able to hold on until an old face reappeared. A black and white pony wearing a black cloak dropped in through a portal.

"Death!" Spirit said. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm here to do exactly what you're trying to do." Death replied. "And it seems you're having some trouble. I figured that I could probably help."

"Help? I'm not sure you're exactly trustworthy right now." Hunter said. "With how fast you double-crossed Chaos, I can see the possibility of you double-crossing us once you get what you want and leave us to fend for ourselves."

"Well, maybe one of you will recognize this and see how important this is." Death said, taking out his scythe.

Upon seeing the scythe, Vulkus immediately said "We should trust him. For now."

"Why?" Spirit asked.

"As I've stated before, this is one of the Divine Instruments." Vulkus explained. "And since now we have the Storm siblings. . ." He didn't need to finish.

While they were discussing this, Death had walked up to the magic flow. Upon entering, he and Storm felt a sudden surge of energy within their scythe's magical powers, and the ponies slowly began pushing forward. However, there was something more to that. For some strange reason, strange lines began to form around Fluttershy's chest, glowing with magical blue energy.

"What's going on with her?" Spirit whispered to Vulkus. Vulkus didn't answer.

The ponies began to move forward, and they soon reached the center of the flow of magic. Finally, once they reached the very center of the flow of magic, the magic flow seemed to begin to fade, and the runes on the doors also began to fade. Once the flow had completely faded, the ponies fell over from sheer exhaustion.

"I never expected doing that do be THAT tiring." Applejack said. "I don't think I've been this tired since I tried bucking the entire farm."

"Now let's finally get to the real reason we're here." Spirit said. "Come on, let's bust everypony out."

The first room had somepony that nopony recognized. It was a dark blue pegasus with dark green eyes and a dark brown mane.

"Who are you?" Spirit asked before the pony could say anything.

"I'm Thunder Ice, but you can call me Thunder." the pony said. "But anyways, why are you here? Not even the guards visit here these days unless they're here to deliver a new prisoner, and nopony has ever dared to break anypony out of this hellhole."

"Well, we're here to break some other ponies out right now, but if you've done enough to get yourself captured by Chaos and stuck here, I think you should come with us." Spirit said.

"Why should I trust you?" Thunder asked. "As far as I know, you're working for the ponies who run this place and this is just a clever trap to lure me into a false sense of security so you can kill me when I have my guard lowered."

"It's your choice." Spirit said. "You can either come with us or stay here."

"I think I'll go with you." Thunder said after some consideration. "At least death's better than staying here for eternity."

After exiting the room, the ponies didn't see any monsters, meaning that Chaos didn't know they were there for the moment.

"I think we should get out of here as soon as possible." Applejack said. "For some reason, I have the feeling that we're going to be discovered."

"Chances are, we probably are." Hunter said. "Judging by how long it's been since we came in, I'd think Chaos has realized that we've made it this far and will begin to send his minions to attack us."

Walking in through the second door, they found Shining Armor and Cadence. After quickly explaining the situation to the two, they left, knowing that it was only a matter of time until they were attacked.

The final door had the last two ancients.

"Come on, we need to get out of here." Spirit said, talking to the ancients.

Immediately realizing the urgency of the situation, the two ancients wordlessly sprang up and the ponies began to move to the door when they were suddenly stopped by Discord, who had teleported in front of them.

"So Chaos got you out of the situation you were in." Spirit noted.

"Yes, but now I'm here to make up for that!" Discord replied, getting slightly annoyed. Suddenly, Chrysalis appeared next to him.

"Where's Night Mare Moon?" Twilight asked.

"She should be arriving here any time now." Discord said. Just as he said that, Night Mare Moon and Zephyr crashed through the wall, both looking exhausted from the long fight they had been in.

"Even if all three of you are here, it'd still be suicide to take on all of us." Snake said. "So in a fair fight, we would probably be able to crush you."

"In a fair fight, that's true." Discord said. "But we never play fair." Suddenly, the room began to change, becoming darker and more gloomier. And while this was happening, Discord, Chrysalis, and Night Mare Moon were changing too. Discord grew dragon wings and many of the lighter colors on his body began to change to a dark black. The holes in Chrysalis' legs and horn began to fill up with dark fire and eventually the dark fire began to expand to other parts of her body. Finally, with Night Mare Moon, she took on a much more demonic appearence, her old wings being replaced with large bat wings and parts of her body becoming colored red.

"Welcome to a dimention of my creation." Discord said. "Here, the power of evil grows and the power of goodness weakens. And do you want to know the best part? Only I can close it, so I can keep you here for as long as I want, so get comfortable."

As if on cue, the room began to darken, probably due to Discord's theatrics, and the ponies felt themselves being pulled away from each other, taken to unknown places in this dimention. And the worst thing about it: nopony could do a thing to stop it.

* * *

**I just realized that since the group I created hasn't changed since around Chapter 5 or 6, and I just keep adding new members, I need to find a way to split them apart for a few chapters. Unfortunately, I don't think I can do that until a few more chapters have passed, so bear with me. Also, did you know that this is the second-longest chapter in the entire story? Anyways, that's all for now.**


End file.
